Favorite scary, bloodcurdling quotes?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was going to name it “Favorite “Lo, I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds”/“Cry Havoc!”-type quotes?”, but that seemed a little oblique.

Anyway…for those moments in all our lives when we need something to say that’s either very gentle but very chilling (“Lo, I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds”); or something that’s sheer cultivated savagery. (i.e. something like “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!”)

Of course, for most of us, those moments won’t actually involve mass death, which isn’t always a bad thing. But that’s beside the point…

So, I ask you…what are your favorite scary, bloodcurdling quote? It can either be “chilling” scary, or “frothing bloodlust” scary.

My first picks:
“THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” -Dante’s Inferno

“We shall not capitulate… no never. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us… a world in flames.”—Adolf Hitler [How much friggin’ scarier can you get than that?]

“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed nomine diaboli” (“I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil”).—Captain Ahab, Moby Dick

And…most of Rilke’s Panther.

Anyone else?

2

“Obedience to law is liberty”

Over the entrance to the courthouse in Worcester, Massachusetts.

3

“Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.”—Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

4

He loved Big Brother. 1984 by George Orwell.

5

“Quoth the Raven: ‘Nevermore.’”

–Edgar Allen Poe, ‘The Raven’

By the same guy:

“And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.”

–Poe, ‘The City in the Sea’

6

Blood Thirsty:

I’m sure Patton has a lot of quotes that would fit:

"And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no one, because I am the meanest mother fucker in the valley. "
Gen. George S. Patton

This sounds apocraphyl, but its still good. I’ve taught my girlfriends 9 year old brother to recite it

“The Greatest Happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.”

      • Genghis Khan

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats”
-H.L. Mecken
And Chilling:

“If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.”

      • Rudyard Kipling, Epitaphs of War

“Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.”
Stephen King, Carrie
This one always seemed a little unsettling:
“as i was going up the stair, i met a man who wasn’t there. he wasn’t there again today. i wish, i wish he’d stay away.”
–hughes mearns, the psychoed

Happy quote until you read the source:

“…A life that is clean, a heart that is true, And doing your best, that’s success.”
Clifford Olson, semifinalist in
the 1995 North American Open Poetry Contest.
Disqualified upon finding that in 1982 he was
convicted of killing eleven chidren

And the ultimate of all cryptic, chilling quotes is of course

“the Horror, the Horror”
-Kipling, Heart of Darkness

7

Nitpick: It was Joseph Conrad, not Rudyard Kipling. :wink:

(God, was that book ever tedious…)

8

The IRA’s message to Margaret Thatcher after their Brighton bomb narrowly missed her:

“Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.”

9

{QUOTE]“The Greatest Happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.”

      • Genghis Khan
        [/QUOTE]

Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentation of the women.

      • Conan the Barbarian

I always thought it sounded familiar for some reason. Now I know why.

My choice to add to the list is [drum roll]
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.

      • Josef Stalin
10

Brick Top : Do you know what “nemesis” means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt… me.

11

"X – This is another times. Father chained me tight. I hurt because he beat me. This time I hit the stick out of his hands and made noise. He went away and his face was white. He ran out of my bed place and locked the door.

"I am not so glad. All day it is cold in here. The chain comes slow out of the wall, And I have a bad anger with mother and father. I will show them. I will do what I did that once.

"I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn’t be nice to me.

“If they try to beat me again Ill hurt them. I will.”

Born of Man and Woman, Richard Matheson

“‘Hé! Was it anything like this that she showed you?’ cried the soba-man, stroking his own face – which therewith became like unto an Egg… And, simultaneously, the light went out.”

Mujina, Lafcadio Hearn

“‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”

The Lottery, Shirley Jackson

“Peek-a-boo,” said Mink.

Zero Hour, Ray Bradbury

12

From Silence of the Lambs:

“It puts the lotion in the basket.”

whimper, scrabble, whimper

“PUT THE FUCKIN LOTION IN THE BASKET!”
From Gladiator:

“On my command…unleash Hell.”

13

I second that one. Jackson is one of my favorite writers.

Another one from King:

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you. - 'Salem’s Lot

14

From a 1943 telegram to an aircraft manufacturing plant director.

15

And, the ever popular—

16

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war **is **my favorite quote of this type so I feel a bit cheated in that you named it in your OP. Hrmph.

Two others, also by Shakespeare, rank up there as well though:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

MacBeth – Act V, Scene v

“And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

King Richard III – Act I, Scene iii

17

This is fun, in a morbid sort of way, good for the halloween season. Here’s some more I thought of:
“Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.”

  • Maximus, Gladiator (the best part of this movie was how it invoked the fatalism of the Roman’s time with quotes like this one)

"Eatherly never stopped having nightmares about what he had done. “He said he could feel those people burning.”

-Brother of Claude Eatherly, who chose Hiroshima as the site for the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Taken from the last line of his obituary

“The Strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must”

-The Athenian ambasador to the relativly weak Melian’s. Later the Athenian’s were to break off negotiations and declare war. Melia was destoryed, all of it’s grown men killed and the women and children sold as slaves.

18

“Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc”, which translates roughly into: “We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.”
Addams Family Motto

19

Man, I hadn’t heard that one before.

I’m not sure if the OP was referring to the following or the actual Bhagavadgita, but J. Robert Oppenheimer is quoted as saying [upon seeing the initial test of his atom bomb], “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.”

20

You may enjoy the song Honour by VNV Nation, which uses that line in the chorus -

As for the quotes game, I’ll also add another quote from VNV Nation, from their song Procession