“Tempt me not to anger!” - King Lear. Poor bastard.
“In the mirrors of the many judgements, my hands are the color of blood. I destroy [bad guys] when I find them, and on that day of which the prophets speak, but in which they do not truly believe, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. But until that day, I will not wash my hands, nor let them stand idle.”
Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon.
“The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft the sword from the bosom of the water, signifying that I, Arthur, by Divine Providence, was to wield Excalibur. That is why I’m your king!”
“Strange women, lying in ponds, distributing weaponry, is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart lugged a sword at you! If I was to go around saying I was an emperor, because some moistened bint tossed a scimitar at me, they’d lock me away!”
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
“Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” – Auntie Mame
- Mahatma Gandhi
“Something, something Dark Side, something, something Complete.”
Yes, that’s pretty much the actual quote from Family Guy. It’s all in how you say it.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
*There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge,
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where
the cotton blooms and grows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed
to hold him like a spell:
Though he’d often say in his homely way that
“he’d sooner live in hell.” *–Robert Service
It gets better towards the end, but that’s all I can quote.
“…it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies - unless one counts journalists.” Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia”
“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man would be such a fool.” Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”
He who the rising tide of anger holds
Like a chariot circling o’er the plains
He truly is the charioteer
Other men but hold the reins
Shakyamuni Buddha
Many people would sooner die than think. Most do.
Bertrand Russell
The chief defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of string
At last he swallowed somw which tied
Itself in ugly knots inside.
Physicians of the utmost fame
Were called at once but when they came
They answered as they took their fees
“There is no cure for this disease
Henry will very soon be dead”
His parents stood around his bed
Lamenting his untimely death
When Henry with his latest breath
Cried “Oh my friends be warned by me
That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea
Are all the human frame requires”
With that the wretched child expires.
Hillaire Belloc
“This must be Thursday. I Never could get the hang of Thursdays”
“I feel unpleasantly drunk”
“What’s so unpleasant about that?”
“Ask a glass of water”
from Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy
“O socii neque ni quari”
“Arma virumque cano, sumus ante malorum”
from The Aenied
All of Verses 3 to 13 of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.
All of Sam McGee
All of Bill the Bomber
All of Kubla Khan
All of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
The “Attack ships on fire” speech
The “A fella can remember” speech from Citizen Kane.
I have no life
“We cannot invade the mainland United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass” - Admiral Yamomoto (sp?)
“Those who would give up an essential liberty for a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” Benjaman Franklin, I think
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold” Robert Service.
Nit pick. Rupert Brooke did not die on the western front. He died on Skyros (near Gallipoli) from suspected blood poisoning from an insect bite.
“Nothing could be worse than to be completely understood.” - attrib. to Nietschze
“Fish and guests stink after three days.” - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
“You don’t understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me.” - Rorschach, Watchmen
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” - Shelley, Ozymandias
“You cheated!” - Will
“Pirate!” - Capt. Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” - attrib. to Voltaire
“You wore blue. The Germans wore grey.” - Rick Blaine, Casablanca
“You see, but you do not observe.” - Sherlock Holmes
“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!” - Sherlock Holmes
“Allow me to remind you of the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”
“The dog did nothing in the nighttime!”
“That was the curious incident.” - Sherlock Holmes
“To be prepared for war is the surest means of ensuring peace.” - George Washington
“…the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, asking only that they who live under its protection demean themselves as good citizens.” - George Washington
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” - Abraham Lincoln
“I like my preachers to look as if they’re fighting bees.” - Abraham Lincoln
“Shoot straight, you bastards. Don’t make a mess of it!” - Harry Morant, Breaker Morant
If you’ve seen the pistons of the mighty C.P.R.
With the driving force of a thousand horse then you know what pistons are.
Robert Service. (Not)
On a morning from a Bogart movie
in a country where they turn back time,
you go strolling through the crowd like
Peter Lorre,
contemplating a crime.
“Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs
B is for Basil, assaulted by bears
C is for Clara who wasted away
D is for Desmond, thrown from a sleigh
E is for Edmund who choked on a peach
F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech
G is for George, smothered under a rug
H is for Hector, done in by a thug
I is for Ida who drowned in the lake
J is for James who took lye by mistake
K is for Kate who was struck with an ax
L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks
M is for Mary who was swept out to sea
N is for Neville who died of ennui
O is for Olive, run through with an awl
P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quentin who sank in a mire
R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire
S is for Sarah who perished of fits
T is for Titus who flew into bits
U is for Una who slipped down a drain
V is for Victor, squashed under a train
W is for Winnie, embedded in ice
X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice
Y is for Yorick, whose head was knocked in
and Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin
-Edward Gorey, The Gashleycrumb Tinies
There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium, and iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium. Europium, zirconium lutetium, vanadium and lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium. And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium… and iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium, and boron, gadolinium niobium, iridium, and strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, and bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.
There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium, and phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium and manganese and mercury, molybdenum magnesium, dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium. There’s lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium, palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium… and cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There’s sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium and also mendelevium einsteinium, nobelium, and argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium… and chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
and there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered.
-Tom Lehrer, The Elements
ETA: they’re perhaps a bit long for quotes, but they’re both good for passing time and keeping cadence while exercising.
“Big as a Norse god, and twice as strong.” - Description of Saval Bork, from the Matador books
“Garret, you’re so slick you’d slide out of your own coffin.” - Glen Cook’s Garret series
“And the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” - The Masque of the Red Death
“What do you know of the art of the sword ?”
“Well, what I know boils down to this. If you see someone running at you with a sword, you put two rounds into their chest to slow them down, and one into their brain to finish them off.” - Noriko and Zeb, Sidhe Devil
“Pardon me, if I deign to interfere in your diligent mutual efforts to encourage mutation through radioactivity.”
“There is not a man I meet, but that I could take his life.” - Haviland Tuf, the Tuf Voyaging stories.
“Go for the eyes Boo ! GO FOR THE EYES ! SQUEEEEE !” - Minsc and Boo
“And instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a Queen ! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn ! Treacherous as the sea ! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth ! All shall love me and despair !
.
.
.
I pass the test. I shall diminish, and go into the West. And remain Galadriel.” - Galadriel going a bit over the top ( I liked it anyway )
And this worldly hope men set their hearts upon
Turns ashes – or it prospers, and anon,
Like snow upon the desert’s dusty face
Lighting a little hour or two – is gone.
Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your winter garment of Repentance fling!
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter – and the Bird is on the Wing.
And about two dozen others from the Rubaiyat I know from memory.