Favorite quotes you know off the top of your head

Cafe Society
21

“Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.”
-Dave Barry

“Your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missile!”
-Robot Santa, Futurama

“It’s just that you have all those squishy parts, Master. And all that water! How the constant sloshing doesn’t drive you mad, I have no idea.”
-HK-47, Knights of the Old Republic

“Love is a very powerful force. Even more so when it’s focused into a coherent beam of destruction.”
-Black Mage, 8-bit Theater

“In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Center promises to always provide useful advice. For instance, the floor here will kill you. Try to avoid it.”
-GLaDOS, Portal

22

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small and utterly unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this sun at a distance of approximately 93 million miles lies a blue-green planet whose ape descended life forms are still so amazingly primitive that they still think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
They simply hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don’t.
“If we’re lucky it’s a Vogon come to throw us out of the airlock”
“And If we’re unlucky?”
“The captain might want to read us some of his poetry first.”
The story so far. In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

23

Something I had in my locker at work for years:
"And I promise you this, if we succeed, no-one will remember. And if we fail, no one will forget!’

                               -Captain Carrot, *Jingo*    by Terry Pratchett
24

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri has plenty of fun quotes, each tied to a particular new technology or secret project.

Why do you insist that the human genetic code is “sacred” or “taboo”? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter, we are chemical processes, and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you are uselessly and pointlessly crippling yourself.
–Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang

Richard Baxter piloted his recon rover into the fungal vortex and single-handedly held off six waves of mindworms. We immediately purchased his identity manifest and repackaged it as the Recon Rover Rick character for a multi-tier media campaign: movies, touchvids, holos, the works. People need heroes. They don’t need to know that he died clawing his eyes out and screaming for mercy; the real story would just hurt sales.

“Abort, Retry, Fail?” was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we’d remind them: If you see this message, always choose retry.

God does not play dice.
–Albert Eintein

Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded.
–Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, upon the discovery of probability mechanics

Man’s unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true, rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible, has always astounded me. We long for a caring universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. “God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.”
Academician Prokhor Zakharov

25

“You sacrificed orphans . . for power ?!”

“Of course ! If I’d sacrificed them for nothing, that would’ve made me sick !” - White and Black Mage, 8-Bit Theatre

“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style” - Jhereg saying, Vlad Taltos books

“Your superior intellects are no match for our puny weapons !” - one of the Simpson’s Halloween episodes
“There’s no God, no side of the angels. There’s just me.” - some guy named Kane ( ? ) from a demons & apocalypse story I recall only that quote from

Mobius the Timestreamer and Kain the vampire Blood Omen cutscene :

“I’ve seen the future, Kain ! You die !”

“But I AM dead.” < chops off Mobius’s head >

26

This is a far far better thing I do than I have ever done before. This is a far better rest than I have known.- Sidney Carton (hope I got it right).

27

“My life’s path is strewn with cowpats from the devil’s own satanic herd!”
-Edmund, Blackadder II

“Villain, you have undone our mother.”
“I have done thy mother.”
-Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

28

Grau, theure freund ist alles theorie,
und groen das lebens goldner baum.

   - I think it's Goethe, but I read it in an Huxley essay.
...your people I do not understand
to you I shall put an end. And you'll never hear surf music again.
   
   - Third Stone From the Sun, J.Hendrix
29

"The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. "

  • Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

  • Jerome K. Jerome

“At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.”

  • PG Wodehouse
30

“Bring on your army, Matthew and Alexandra, and I’ll show them all the awful things I’ve learned to do since I died.” - Jacob’s ghost, The Man With The Golden Torc

“We’re the Justice League. We’ve beaten up real gods and made them cry.” - Never actually saw the comic this is from, but the line has stuck in my head since I saw it quoted.

“They went in with the long knives, and left nothing but blood and silence behind them.” - Vortex

“I was going to declare war on the world, and I was going to lose.” - Doctor Impossible, Soon I Will Be Invincible

Marvel Thor and Loki, after Loki turned him into a frog for a time :

Thor : “I would like to leave you something. A remembrance, a memento of my recent transformation.”

Loki : “Well, get on with it.”

  • CRUNCH ! *

Loki : “AHHHHH ! ! You broke my arm ! !”

Thor : “Ah ! As always, the cunning mind of Loki pierces to the heart of the matter !”

31

“If I have seen further than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants”

Issac Newton
“This is a very simple game, you hit the ball, you throw the ball, you catch the ball”- Bull Durham

32

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, “Let Newton Be!” and all was light.

Alexander Pope, 18th century.

33

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. – Terry Pratchett (arguably one of my favorite quotes of all time.)

Comparisons are odorous. – Dogsbody, from Much Ado About Nothing

34

I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.

That hurts here (pointing to heart) and here (pointing to head.) (That’s from Scrubs. My daughter and I love quoting the lines at each other.)

It’s not Geordie. It’s me, Claire (from Voyager by Diana Gabaldon.) Every time I read that line I get a schoompy thrill.

35

“Some days the magic works. Some days, it doesn’t.”

From Little Big Man. I use this one almost daily (I work in IT, and it applies almost daily!).

36

This I like.

37

“It did not last; the Devil howling ‘Ho!
Let Einstein Be!’ restored the status quo.” -

John Collings Squire

38

A man’s right to kill himself is inviolable but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary - Steinbeck, either Tortilla Flat or Cannery Row (we weren’t meant to google right ?)

“… on to Mansfield that once romantic now utterly disheartening colliery town” - D.H. Lawrence describing my home town in Lady Chatterley

You can’t run faster than a bear but I like to think I only need to run faster than the other bloke - and he’s carrying a camera ! - wildlife presenter (among other things) Sir David Attenborough

My candle burns at both ends, it gives a lovely light but oh my foes and ah my friends it will not last the night - Edna St Vincent Millay

Actions speak louder than accents - this was in an article about a female British racehorse trainer who had it framed on her wall but don’t know where it comes from.

Dylan Thomas called Swansea (my other home town) “a lovely ugly town” in the late 90s film Twin Town this was updated to “pretty shitty city”.

Not quotes but I could probably recite Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled” & Rossetti’s “Remember” without too much stumbling and I’ve random Shakespeare chunks hidden away too. I wish I could remember more of this poem …

Oh my trust in freedom
Wrap me warm
Against this matress thin
And blanket torn
Out there is …

That’s it I’m off to the bookshelf !

39

If I should fall think only this of me

That theres some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England

There shall be in that rich earth a richer dust concealed

A dust whom England bore,shaped,made aware

Gave once her flowers to love

Her ways to roam

A body of Englands breathing English air

Washed by her rivers,blest by the suns of home

Rupert Brooke killed on the Western front 1915

In that rich earth a richer dust

40

“What does the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand?
What does the mind do - each morning - waking?”

“He didn’t know if he was sane or insane. The thought was driving him insane.”

“To go is to return.”

“He saw the world from last September.”

All from The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. The first was my email sig file for a time. I’m not sure of the wording on the last one.

“You may think I’m dethpicable, but I’m different. Pain HURT-THS me!” Daffy Duck (another sig file)

“I don’t see buildings. I see people.” Anonymous WTC collapse witness on 9/11/01.

“There are five hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven of them you cannot say on television. They must be bad words! That’s what we call them - ‘bad words’. ‘You said a bad word!’ (Pow) ‘Ow! Wah!’. That’s right - you get over here - you seven!” … “But there are no bad words. There are bad deeds, bad intentions - and WORDS.” George Carlin

“There is an asymmetry in the way we view matter and energy.” the first sentence of Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect - the one that won him the Nobel Prize. I cannot reliably cite the full first paragraph from memory, but it’s stunningly brilliant, beautifully written, and ballsy. The last because it was Einstein’s previous paper earlier that same year on Brownian Motion that drove the last nail in the coffin of the idea that matter was continuous, and atoms were just good book-keeping. That patent clerk is going places, I tells ya!

“Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not” Einstein again. Part of what prompted Neils Bohr to say “Albert, stop telling God what to do!”

“Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And the king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.” Bruce Springsteen “Badlands”

“Those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse.
Is a dream a lie
When it don’t come true
Or is it something worse?” Bruuuce again - “The River”

“Fear’s a powerful thing.
It’ll take your God-filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust.” Springsteen again - “Devils and Dust”

“The Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt are unique I suppose.
When they built you brother, they broke the mold.” The Boss once more - “Terry’s Song”

[I’m from New Jersey - it’s the law! :wink: ]

“May the father of peace bring peace to all who mourn. Amen.” My favorite translation of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The original is anonymous of course.

“Fast, cheap, good - pick two!” poster at most workplaces - anonymous again.

“Martel was angry - so much he did not turn his blood from anger.” Cordwainer Smith (pen name for Paul Lineberger) in “Scanners Live in Vain”

A few from John Kessel’s “Faustfeathers”:

Groucho Faustus: “With a couple more assistants like you, I could change gold into base metal”

Grouco: “Around here time is money, and my time is woith a couple of marks. You boys look like a couple of marks - are you brothers?”

Satan: “Behold Dis - the city of Hell!”
Groucho: “You’re a heck of a travel agent - see Dis and Die!”

Diccolini (Chico): “Bella felissima ronzoni alla pachino!”
Helen of Troy: “You know I don’t speak Latin, my lord.”
Chico: “Atsa no Latin. Atsa Italian”
Helen: “I don’t peak that either.”
Chico: “Atsa OK - neither do I!”

ETA: “For a successful technical program, reality must take precedence over public relations, because nature cannot be fooled.” Richard P. Feynman - last sentence of the Appendix to the Challenger Commission Report.