“Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around tall idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.”
I read a Warhammer 40k battle report were the humans beat the Tyrannids that ended, “We’ve sustained an acceptable casualty rate of 97%”
Dr. Strangelove:
President Merkin Muffley: You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
There was a young lady from Bruges,
Whose thing was remarkably huge.
Observed Louis Quatorze,
As he lowered her drawers,
“Et bien, après moi, le déluge”
Well, if we’re getting into Ominous Limericks now:
A lady born under a curse
Used to drive forth each day in a hearse
From the back she would wail
Through a thickness of veil,
“Things do not get better, but worse!”
From Mass Effect 2, and from memory (spoilered because the game is so recent) :
[spoiler]You have accomplished NOTHING, human ! We will find another way. Your species has caught the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are coming to be your salvation through annihilation.
Cue shot of massive Reaper fleet powering up and moving our way, when it took the military might of half the known galaxy to put ONE of those behemoths down…[/spoiler]
The quote means “Sign the form approving the Challenger launch or get fired.” That’s the part that’s ominous.
I think it was Roger Boisjoly who said that he would not sign off on the launch because he did not want to explain his signature to a board of inquiry.
I see, appreciate the clarification. I thought the quote was from something post Challenger disaster, encouraging investigators to understand what happened from the point of view of the process or some such.
Fighter: <holds up sword> “Kind of chainsaw wrong.”
Fighter: “Because friends look out for one another and we’re friends, but Black Mage is my best friend. Also, I can block any attack and kill anything that bleeds. Hint.”
From Shadowsinger, of The Spellsong Cycle, set on a world where song makes magic. A scene where the Sorceress Protector Secca has sent a message asking the Matriarch Alya for ships:
And when she arrives…the nature of that world’s magic, that you sing it and it happens naturally makes for “ominous quotes”.
*Magma from the core, fire for Sturinn’s woe,
rise and climb from the mantle deep below;
explode in flame, and from the earth in fire flow.
Searing every river, hill and dale, and plain
with gas and ash and lava till none remain
untouched, unstruck, and none escape the fire’s bane…
Lava rise, and lava flare, burst on all below;
cover ever town and road in fire’s glow,
split the land and force the sea to fire know.
With heat and steam and molten rock bring to bear
all destruction of the earth and sea to Sturinn fair
until none remain, and none will know what is buried there…*
IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY, CROWLEY? OUR TROOPS ARE ASSEMBLED, THE FOUR BEASTS HAVE BEGUN TO RIDE – BUT WHERE ARE THEY RIDING TO? SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG, CROWLEY. AND IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. AND, IN ALL PROBABILITY, YOUR FAULT. WE TRUST YOU HAVE A PERFECTLY REASONABLE EXPLANATION FOR ALL THIS . . .
. . . BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE YOUR CHANCE TO EXPLAIN IT ALL TO US. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE ALL THE TIME THERE IS TO EXPLAIN. AND WE WILL LISTEN WITH GREAT INTEREST TO EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY. AND YOUR CONVERSATION, AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT WILL ACCOMPANY IT, WILL PROVIDE A SOURCE OF ENTERTAINMENT AND PLEASURE FOR ALL THE DAMNED OF HELL, CROWLEY. BECAUSE NO MATTER HOW RACKED WITH TORMENT, NO MATTER WHAT AGONIES THE LOWEST OF THE DAMNED ARE SUFFERING, CROWLEY, YOU WILL HAVE IT WORSE–
Darn it! I’m sure I read this years ago somewhere (a comic book?) but I have no idea where and none of my searches match the quote as I remember it. IIRC, it was some demon-lord type villain talking to one of his underlings: “The indignities I have already suffered are such that the perpetual torture of every living thing in creation until the end of time would scarcely atone for it; and YOU have just made it worse…”
“The wayfarer, perceiving the path to truth, was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. ‘Ha!’, he said, ‘I see that no one else has passed here in a long time.’ Later, he saw that each weed was a singular knife. ‘Well’, he mumbled at last, ‘Doubtless there are other roads.’”