Favorite Quotes

[baldur27]

When a man lies he murders some part of the world - merlin excalibur

 

[Werthead]

Just a couple to be going on with:

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?"
"I supposed a magician might. But a gentleman never could."

- The Duke of Wellington & Jonathan Strange, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."
- Cersei Lannister, A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin

 

[j d worthington]

I love this quote j. d. Is "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans" a short story?

Yes. It's included in his collections Deathbird Stories and The Essential Ellison (a retrospective covering his entire career), and is also in The Hugo Winners, vol. III, I believe.

 

[Thadlerian]

From Terry Pratchett's Soul Music:
I think it goes like this:
"'... grumblemumblemumble,' said the Dean, a rebel without a pause."

 

[j d worthington]

Well, as in another thread, I don't see anything saying we can't quote from poetry, so here goes. Again, I don't have a particular favorite, but these are certainly high on my list:

"The breeze -- the breath of God -- is still --
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy -- shadowy -- yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token --
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!" -- Edgar Allan Poe, "Spirits of the Dead" (1827)

"... I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy --
Of the baubles that it may." -- Poe, "To ______" (1829)

 

[JBI]

"The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge."-(Hamlet,Shakespear)

 

[Werthead]

"Wherever you find human misery, you find lawyers, either causing it, or making a profit from it" - Pandora's Star, Peter F. Hamilton

"Beware of wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger." - Merry Brandybuck (among others), Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

"Westward shimmered the fields and pastures of Yavanna, gold beneath the tall wheat of the gods." - The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien

And one from TV land:

“I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the Galaxy. I want to see the Centauri stretch for their hand again and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power. I want us to be what we used to be. I want it all back the way it was.” - Londo Mollari, Babylon 5: Signs and Portents (be careful what you wish for...)

 

[Nesacat]

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

In dreams and visions lie the greatest creations of man, for on them rests no yoke of line or hue. ~ RH Barlow & HP Lovecraft, The Night Ocean

Round pegs find round holes, square pegs find square holes. And by the same token, albeit with rather greater difficulty, I am sure that there must somewhere be a corresponding hole for such a peg as proverbial metaphor may dub trapezohedral! ~ HP Lovecraft, In a letter applying for a job

For the cat is cryptic, and close to Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten. ~ HP Lovecraft, The Cats of Ulthar

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, I've always liked that quote from the application letter HPL wrote. Felt that way more than a few times myself....

As for "The Cats of Ulthar", that's an appropriate choice, wouldn't you say? Besides, it is a lovely story, and one of my own personal favorites, as well. "The Night Ocean" -- I believe this is the first time I've seen someone quote from that particular story, unless specifically discussing it; a lovely tale, with just the right touch of the unknown to truly bring up that feeling of awe as well as terror. Good choice.

Incidentally, you know that Lovecraft was very fond of quoting from Wilde's preface to Dorian Gray? He often quoted from it in his comments about the weird tale as an art form....

 

[Nesacat]

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

While not a life changing quote, it is my favorite opening line ever.

Have always liked this one since usually it's the man in black doing the chasing or the stalking.

 

[Tau Zero]

"Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."

Now that is what i call a threat! They're my favorite lines of Lord of the Rings.

 

[Tau Zero]

Another favorite is from Lovecraft's Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath. Boy, did that guy have a way with words! What follows is only one sentence.

"There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity − the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine
of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep."​

 

[j d worthington]

Both of these are from Gerald Kersh -- unfortunately, I no longer have my Kersh books, and cannot recall the titles of the stories (if anyone can fill that in, I'd appreciate it). However:

"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armor, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment."

and: "We hang about the necks of our tomorrows like hungry harlots about the necks of penniless sailors."

 

[j d worthington]

Just ran across this one, from Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club:

"Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as mere doggerel to memorize on a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, ... she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power."

 

[GOLLUM]

So it's having an effect then JD?..

 

[Nesacat]

Soon we'll have been clamouring for more murders too.

 

[Joel007]

Scrubs has some interesting quotes

Dr. Kelso: [into phone] Darling, I want to say something. For the past 25 years, we've been going through the motions -- once every couple of weeks we have sex, and then we have breakfast without saying a word. Well, tonight, I want you to put on a nice dress, because I'm gonna take you to dinner and I'm gonna start telling you all the things I haven't taken the time to say all these years. ... I love you, too.
[He hangs up.]
Ted: That was...beautiful, sir!
Dr. Kelso: Thanks, Ted. Call my wife, tell her I won't be home tonight.

 

[Paige Turner]

Actually, I thought this line from The Firm really worked:

"What will they do to you?"
"Whatever it is, they did it to me a long time ago."

 

[BookStop]

"But when I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I should live to be married."

Much Ado About Nothing

 

[Pyan]

'Son, here's a million dollars. Don't lose it.' Larry Niven's father to Larry Niven, on his 21st birthday.