“Was there ever a dog that could fly?”
“Yes, but the whitecoats cut off its wings to see what would happen.”
“What did happen?”
“It couldn’t fly.”
– Richard Adams, The Plague Dogs
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport’.”
– Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
“Thou speakest aright - I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, when I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile…”
Puck. Twelfth Night, Shakespeare.
I know the whole speech, I just didn’t feel like typing any more of it!
and:
Will you walk a little faster said a whiting to a snail
There’s a porpoise close behind us and he’s treading on my tail
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance
they are waiting on the seashore won’t you come and join the dance
Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe
You are old father william the young man said
And your hair has become very white
And yet you repeatedly stand on your head
Do you think at your age it is right?
“What we have here… is a failure to communicate.” – Cool Hand Luke (so, so applicable to communications. 
)
“My brother, my captain, my King.” – Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ (this one always makes me choke up a bit)
“We are the music-makers and
We are the dreamers of dreams
…
World-losers and world-forsakers
Upon whom the pale moon gleams
Yet we are the movers and the shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.”
– Arthur Edgar William O’Shaughnessy, ‘Ode’
“What, still you would have their praise!
But here’s a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what dreaming she gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.”
– W.B. Yeats, “Against Unworthy Praise”
“Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why,”
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Goldengrove Unleaving”
“Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate.” (Abandon all hope, ye who enter here)
– Dante, “The Divine Comedy”
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A mighty pleasure dome decree
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
Coleridge
Oh, if only it were all so simple!
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds. And it was only necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And who can destroy a piece of their own heart?
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I’m all out of bubblegum.
If you like to gamble I tell ya I’m your man
You win some lose some it’s all the same to me
“A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.” - Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native.
Sad that all my knowledge of the great works of literature and art are only known to me because of Month Python and The Simpsons.
From Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse:
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. - PG Wodehouse
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with very odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like. - Lemony Snicket from The Slippery Slope
It’s strange to have a creation out there. A deeply mutated version of yourself running loose and screwing everything up. I wonder if this is how parents feel. - Dexter
“As if it matters how a man falls down!”
“When the fall is all that is left, it matters a great deal.”
…you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks,
The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'tis is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now at that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
“And silent as stone he rode down alone
From the floor of the double-damned.”
– Ogden Nash, “A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor”, a Nash poem not enough people know about; everyone knows the funny stuff, but man, could he do dark, too…
“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming…”
– E.A. Poe, “The Raven”. Got most of the poem memorized, but this line is my favorite.
I believe that’s from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. In a high school production, I played Oberon, whose opening line (which I once blanked on, much to my horror), was “Ill-met by moonlight, proud Titania!”
This is the quote I use at the start of my lectures on TB and brucellosis (both on the rise):
" He that will not apply new remedies must accept new evils, for time is the great innovator" - Francis Bacon
Also:
“When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” - Mark Twain
When Grandmama fell off the boat
And couldn’t swim (and wouldn’t float),
Matilda just stood by and smiled.
I almost could have slapped the child.
I had written to Aunt Maud
Who was on a trip abroad
When I heard she’d died of cramp,
Just too late to save the stamp.
During dinner at the Ritz
Father kept on having fits.
And, which made my sorrow greater,
I was left to tip the waiter.
When Mrs Gorm (Aunt Eloise)
Was stung to death by savage bees,
Her husband (Prebendary Gorm)
Put on his veil, and took the swarm.
He’s publishing a book next May,
On “How to make Bee-keeping Pay”.
All by Harry Graham, in my opinion the greatest ever writer of humorous verse (though sadly forgotten these days).
“A city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.” - John F. Kennedy, describing Washington, D.C.
“It was involuntary. They sank my boat.” - JFK, asked how he became a hero in WW2
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” - JFK, Inaugural Address
“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” - JFK, after the Bay of Pigs (not original to him, I’ve since read)
“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.” - JFK, about the splash his wife had made
“Don’t get mad; get even.” - JFK, on politics
“There are no whites-only sections in our military cemeteries.” - JFK, on segregation
“‘Don’t spend a penny more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’ll buy a landslide.’” - JFK, pretending to read a telegram from his father at a political dinner
“This is probably the greatest accumulation of talent and brilliance in the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” - JFK, to a gathering of Nobel Prize laureates
Fool of a Took! You forget the opening, which is half the awesomeness!
Assuming you were respecting copyright, here’s the whole thing.
"I don’t care if this violates the Geneva Conventions, I want it. "
-Gladys
I love using this line whenever I’m very emphatic about getting something…using the character’s tone of voice…very funny.
Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
(?)
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
(Hilaire Belloc)
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York
(Richard III)
Enter a bleeding Sergeant: “What bloody man is this?”
(sort of MacBeth!)
