“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face… forever.”
- George Orwell, 1984
“If the lives of troops are meaningless, my lord, then spend them.”
Ancar shook his head. “Spend them ?” he repeated, baffled.
Falconsbane leaned forward over the table, underscoring his intensity with his posture, and the nearest of the mages drew back a little before the avid hunger in his eyes. “Use them, my lord. What does it matter if this is a trap ? Throw lives at a weak point until you seize it ! Their controlling spells will hold past the border now, you have no need to fear that they will no longer obey you once they cross it. So throw them at the border, at one spot, in numbers too great for the Valdemarans to counter.” His smile broadened. “I would venture to say that the Valdemarans have a witless concern over the loss of their fighters. That can be used against them, and is a potent weapon in your arsenal. Throw your troops at the border, march them over the top of their own dead. Take a position, hold it, fortify it, and use it to take another position. Take land, my lord, and eat into their side as a canker-worm eats a rosebud. Ignore losses, ignore other targets. Take land, and cut Valdemar in half. If lives do not matter, then use them up to your advantage.”
Ancar stared at him, eyes wide, but now it was with an unholy glee, and he drank in the words as a religious zealot would drink in holy writ.
------------- From Winds of Fury by Mercedes Lackey.
What is more ominous than War?
‘When I hear the word culture I reach for my pistol’ - Hermann Goering
'Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before this hour’s out, you’ll laugh on the other side.
And them that die - will be the lucky ones."
- Treasure Island
Regards,
Shodan
What a great thread.
I don’t recall the exact words, but in Fellowship of the Ring, in the Prancing Pony, when Aragorn asks Frodo if he’s frightened, and then tells him he’s not frightened enough – “I know what hunts you.”
Chills.
“It was a distant sound, faint and wavering, but he knew it. It was the baying of a pack of hounds.”
Richard Connell: The Most Dangerous Game.
From an otherwise pretty lame vampire movie, Near Dark:
Bartender: Wh-what do you folks want?
Jesse (Lance Henriksen): Just a few minutes of your time … which is just about the duration of the rest of your lives.
Loy Colton (Tim Thomerson) (pointing a gun): I’d stop right there if I was you, mister!
Jesse: I doubt it.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes into work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that knew everything he needed to know about people. - Terry Pratchett
I spent a fortune keeping you quiet
And you found a nice way of paying me back
Now how does the future look without me
From the inside of a sack? - Richard Thompson
Once upon a time in the West…
Harmonica is confronted at the train staion by three guys sent to “Collect him”.
He notes that they only have three horses, none for him.
The tough guys laugh, saying “hey, looks like we’re shy one horse”.
To which Harmonica replies:
“No, I’d say you brought two too many…”
This one requires context: The protagonist of the story has just wandered into a hedge-maze that, unbeknownst to him, is feeding off his fear and causing his panic reactions to create monsters of sorts. Meanwhile, a man who tried to warn him about the maze is gleefully running commentary on the journey while remotely viewing him.
The protagonist says something about how he’ll have to remember earplugs ‘for next time’.
The man chuckles, and says, “He thinks they’ll be a next time.”
Just the matter-of-fact way he says it, like the protagonist’s death is a foregone conclusion, makes me quote it a lot.
Not evil, but I have a couple of ominous ones from Babylon 5.
Ambassador Kosh:
“The avalance has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.”
Vir:
“What do I want? I want to live just long enough to see your severed head mounted on a pike, as a reminder to the next ten generations that some “favors” come at too high a price. And I will wave, like this. Can your associates arrange that?”
“Why, this is Hell, nor are you out of it.”
Faust
“Abandon hope all ye who enter herein.”
Divine Comedy
“I never drink…wine.”
Dracula
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered. “Knocking on my chamber door, only this and nothing more.”
The Raven
I dunno, sent shivers down my spine, let me tell you.
Here’s an equally scary one, along the same lines:
Here’s another one I’ve just encountered:
It’s from John Ringo and Michael Z. Williamson’s The Hero. A character is left, abandoned on an alien planet, with a pistol, and a note:
“I left you a bullet.”
The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black removers van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Comes the women in dark glasses and the humpbacked surgeons
And the scissor man.
–W. H. Auden, “The Two.”
“Cold be hand and heart and bone,
and cold be sleep under stone:
never more to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
till the Dark Lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.”
JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
Mongol General: We have won again. That is good! But what is best in life?
Mongol Warrior: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcon on your wrist, wind in your hair!
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!
Mongol General: That is good.
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
The Raven
Bart, “Excuse me while I whip this out.”
Blazing Saddles
Who ever said cute l’il cartoon can’t be ominous?