Favorite Quotes

[Karsa Orlong]

We are the centuries.

We are the chin-choppers and the golly-woppers, and soon we shall discuss the amputation of your head.

Walter Miller

(The start of a lovely passage in the book I'm reading currently, A Canticle for Leibowitz.)

 

[captainslog]

No tears please,it's such a waste of good suffering.
Pinhead.

 

[Bedlam]

"I told you I was ill."
(Spike Milligan's headstone)

 

[j d worthington]

Not the usual sort of source this time, but a critical article:

"Self-referentially, Lovecraft's career-long text itself is a sprawling hall of mirrors, mirrors mirroring mirrors, a labyrinth of iterated thematic reflections through which wanders the Outsider who forever reaches forth, in hope against hope, to touch the glass."

-- Donald Burleson, "On Lovecraft's Themes: Touching the Glass"

 

[K. Riehl]

"No,no never send interim reports," said Miles, "only final ones. Interim reports tend to ellicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, time which you could be using to solve the problem.

Miles Vorkosigan- Brothers in Arms

 

[K. Riehl]

Here is another from Bujold:
"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in the future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real."
Aral Vorkosigan-Shards of Honor

 

[j d worthington]

Here are a few more that I quite like, from James Branch Cabell's Beyond Life:

"... pilfering light from the past to shed it upon the future."

"In books, of course, may be encountered any number of competently evil people, who take a proper pride in their depravity. But in life men go wrong without dignity, and sin as it were from hand to mouth."

"For man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams. So he fares onward chivalrously, led by ignes fatui no doubt, yet moving onward. And that the goal remains ambiguous seems but a trivial circumstance to any living creature who knows, he knows not how, that to stay still can be esteemed a virtue only in the dead."

And this delightful double-barbed quip:

"In other words, King James is bold enough to voice it as a truism that women go to the Devil in search of congeniality."

 

[Cuchulainn]

"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen"
-Paul Coelho - The Alchemist
-Ralph Emerson

(I think thats how it goes...)
P.S. My signed copy of The Alchemist ftw!

 

[Joel007]

Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

 

[Tau Zero]

Some lighthearted quotes for your amusement.

"I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me." --Dave Barry

(On going to war over religion) "You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend." -- Rich Jeni

"Yesterday a guy cut me off in traffic. I said unto him, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' but not in those words." -- Woody Allen

"I met a new girl at a barbecue, very pretty, a blond, I think. I don’t know, her hair was on fire, and all she talked about was herself. You know these kinds of girls: 'I'm hot. I'm on fire. Me, me, me.' You know. 'Help me, put me out.' Come on, could we talk about me just a little bit?" -- Garry Shandling

And finally, a few by Stephen Wright:

I bought some batteries... but they weren’t included. So I had to buy them again.

I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn’t have to go so fast.

I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in front of it in only eight minutes.

 

[HoopyFrood]

This one made me chuckle earlier:

"There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"
"Yeah," said Rincewind..."Luters, I expect."
(The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett)
Hehe.

And one that made me re-read it a couple of time, because I liked it:

Darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simply its absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic.
(To state the obvious: The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett)

 

[Mark Robson]

'The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million years, they were the worst too. After that things went positively downhill...' Paraphrased from a quote by Marvin in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by the late, great, Douglas Adams. (Paraphrased because I can't be bothered to drag my copy from where it lives - in my car!)

 

[Pyan]

Occasionally I also have to inject a little weather and scenery in my deathless classics, two further examples of literary racketeering that I especially deplore in the writings of others. Yet there is something to be said in extenuation of weather and scenery, which, together with adjectives, do much to lighten the burdens of authors, and run up their word count.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, part of the foreword to Skeleton Men of Jupiter

 

[SpaceShip]

Here are a couple that I like:

1. Failure is experienced by many who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up: THOMAS EDISON.

Now that is something I think we can all listen to. Me particularly!

2. Truth grows hard if not softened by love; love grows weak if not strengthened by truth. ANON

Oooo - I like that one!

 

[ScottSF]

This is definitely my all-time favourite


To the last I grapple with thee; from Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee (Melville - Moby Dick)

You use this a lot in daily life? I'll have to remember that next time somebody shoots a rubberband at me at work.

Maybe' Book quotes should be the title of the thread. Some of these are from movies.

I'm personally fond of this one from Kerouac's DR. Sax. "I got a nose, you got a nose."

 

[ScottSF]

oh, here's one from MacBeth I sometimes fling at people.

"Egg! young fry of treachery!"

 

[Thadlerian]

A paragraph in China Miéville's intro to The Scar:

"There are bottomless shafts of water. There are places where the granite and muck base of the sea falls away in vertical tunnels that plumb miles, spilling into other planes, under pressure so great that the water flows sluggish and thick. It spurts through the pores of reality, seeping back in dangerous washes, leaving fissures through which displaced forces can emerge."

As if there wasn't enough reason to read it already

 

[j d worthington]

Maybe' Book quotes should be the title of the thread. Some of these are from movies.

Well, as usual, the first post tends to get overlooked:

Everyone post their favorite quotes from any book. (write the name of the book and the author if you know)

They have been interesting, anyway....

 

[aarti]

Here is another from Bujold:
"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in the future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real."
Aral Vorkosigan-Shards of Honor

That one is really good! I have to start reading the Vorkosigan novels. I've never tried sci fi, really, but I like Bujold's fantasy novels. So I should give Miles a whirl!

 

[Joel007]

another quote from one of my favorite authors

"What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. "It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler. "I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)