Awesome quotes [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Heliomance

2011-02-07, 09:29 PM

I collect awesome quotes. I mean that in the original meaning of he word - quotes that, to a greater or lesser extent, inspire awe. Quotes that resonate, that connect on a deeper level, that make you blink and go "wow".

All that sounds thoroughly overblown and presumptuous, and probably is. A lot of the quotes here won't make you feel like that, probably. I just didn't want people jumping in and going "oh i think ths quote is hilarius!!one!", not that I expect that off the playground.

I think at this point I'll put down the shovel and stop digging. In this thread, I'm going to share some of the quotes I really like, and I'm hoping you guys will do the same so I can collect some new ones.

________________________________________

Mythlogies were never intended to be only stories. Dream hard enough and you can exist within them: neither reality, nor fantasy: just one realm of infinite possibilities.
-Always Forever, Mark Chadbourne

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement.
- The Wake, Abney Park

When I first became a Paladin, I thought in terms of black and white. I see now that it's really a spectrum of greys, and that plenty of people straddle my arbitrary line between good and evil.
But you know what? Those people aren't my problem. My job is to sniff out those who live their lives far enough away from that line that I need to squint to see any light, and then kick their ass in a manner most righteous.
- Unknown

Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world - "No, you move."
- Captain America

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honour, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies. No matter if they're true or not, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.
- Secondhand Lions

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do. Thunder on my right hand. Lightning on my left hand. Fire behind me. Frost in front of me.
Frost to fire.
- The Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett.

Do not question me, mortal. I am of the earth; when your cities fade to dust and the stars blink from the sky, still I will be, still I will remember you, unto your ten thousandth birth and your ten thousandth death.
-The Tygre

Science Officer

2011-02-07, 09:45 PM

I believe that Cap quote is actually quoting or at least paraphrasing Mark Twain

Anyways, I like these, and your quotes as well:

"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life."
—George Orwell, in The Lion and the Unicorn

"As a scientist, the truth is your precise duty." -Paul Dirac

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." -H.L. Mencken

He accepted of the Honour, saying, that since he had dipp'd his Hands in Muddy Water, and must be a Pyrate, it was better being a Commander than a common Man." - Captain Charles Johnson, on Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts

"Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."
— JRR Tolkien

"As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.' Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air -- the indulging in waking dreams -- the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings." Mary Shelley

Mystic Muse

2011-02-07, 09:56 PM

Sort of the same as Captain America's there.
Joker: It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?
Batman: Because I've heard it before... and it wasn't funny the first time.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C. S. Lewis

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
C. S. Lewis

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
C. S. Lewis

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
C. S. Lewis

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
C. S. Lewis

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
C. S. Lewis

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
C. S. Lewis

"No man made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." Can't remember.

Those are the only board appropriate ones I can find at the moment.

Jokasti

2011-02-07, 10:00 PM

How can you quote C.S. Lewis without saying my favorite one?
"He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart."

Ranger Mattos

2011-02-07, 10:25 PM

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/

Mostly wisdom-type quotes, but there are some awesome-type quotes there too. Like

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
- Carl Sandburg

Mystic Muse

2011-02-07, 10:36 PM

How can you quote C.S. Lewis without saying my favorite one?
"He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart."

Because that wasn't on the site I have of his quotes and I've never heard it.

VeisuItaTyhjyys

2011-02-07, 11:27 PM

Do not question me, mortal. I am of the earth; when your cities fade to dust and the stars blink from the sky, still I will be, still I will remember you, unto your ten thousandth birth and your ten thousandth death.
-The Tygre

Oh, William Blake. You are a good dude.

Icewalker

2011-02-08, 02:19 AM

Well. This is my kind of thread. I have a whole backlog of these. :smallbiggrin:

Funny, powerful/interesting lines, and serious. Lemme pick out the serious.

" 'would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where-' said Alice
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat."
-Alice and The Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

"Liberty? Why it doesn't exist. There is no liberty in this world, just gilded cages."
-Aldous Huxley

"An invention with no philosophy behind it is a curse."
-Dr. Lloyd Steam, Steamboy

"In order to attain the impossible one must attempt the absurd."
-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (author of Don Quixote)

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."
-Dream, from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman

"Who understands does not preach;
Who preaches does not understand.
Reserve your judgments and words;
Smooth differences and forgive disagreements."
-Dao De Jing

"There is no point in saying less than your predecessors have said."
-John Simon (congratulations you have won the award for most generic and therefore untrackable name!)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-Bene Gesserit litany against fear, Dune

"When a romantic tries to do a good thing and fails they give him a medal. When a pragmatist succeeds, they wish him in hell."
-Donatti, Quitters, Inc by Stephen King

"It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt."
-Dream, The Sandman

"Society corrupts the best of us. It is a little unfair, I think, to criticize a person for not sharing the enlightenment of a later epoch, but it is also profoundly saddening that such prejudices were so extremely pervasive.. The question raises nagging uncertainties about which of the conventional truths of our own age will be considered unforgivable bigotry by the next."
-Broca's Brain by Carl Sagan

"There will be sleeping enough in the grave."
-Benjamin Franklin

"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!"
-Cylon model #1, Battlestar Galactica

factotum

2011-02-08, 02:49 AM

"There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other." -- Leonardo da Vinci, talking about manned flight

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." -- Neil Armstrong

Keld Denar

2011-02-08, 02:57 AM

A bunch of CS Lewis quotes without my favorite? Blasphemy!

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret. Now that I am 50 I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness.
- CS Lewis

Also, a personal favorite of mine:
A normal person believes that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. An engineer believes that if it ain't broke, it simply doesn't have enough features yet!
- Anon

Toastkart

2011-02-08, 07:08 AM

Some really good ones here. Now to add my own.

“We can do anything we like as long as it is unimportant.” ~ Ted Kaczynski (Industrial Society and its Future)

"The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness." ~ John Dewey (The Public and Its Problems)

“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” ~ Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus)

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” ~ Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus).

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” ~ Werner Heisenberg.

“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.” ~ Illusions (Richard Bach).

“Human experience does not lend itself to the authoritative claims of either religion or science.” ~ Alan Bullock (The Humanist Tradition in the West)

“A culture’s teachings, and most importantly, the nature of its people, achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves… or they find themselves lacking.” ~Kreia (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2)

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
~ Marianne Williamson

Heliomance

2011-02-08, 07:32 AM

Oh, William Blake. You are a good dude.
No, not the poem. The poster The Tygre (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=29564)

Jokasti

2011-02-08, 08:30 AM

Kain05

2011-02-08, 09:03 AM

A child's rhyme stuck in my head.
It said that life is but a dream.
I've spent so many years in question
to find I've known this all along.
- MJK

Trellan

2011-02-08, 10:28 AM

A few of my favorites:

Bravery and cowardice are only a matter of circumstance; strength and weakness are only a matter of the conditions.
- Sun Tzu

The proud ones do not last long, but vanish like a spring night's dream. And the mighty ones too will perish in the end, like dust before the wind.
- Tales of Heike

Don't dwell too long on your failure; it's a form of narcissism, and it helps nothing.
-Robert Downey Jr.

Cyrion

2011-02-08, 02:00 PM

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash, too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all- to see life as it is and not as it should be.
-Cervantes (the character, not the real author) in Man of La Mancha

mucat

2011-02-08, 03:19 PM

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man."
— George Bernard Shaw

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. Look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts."
— Richard Feynman

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had never suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
— Mark Twain

Icewalker

2011-02-10, 07:49 PM

“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars,
too often man forgets the flowers at his feet”
- Jeremy Bentham

Phishfood

2011-02-11, 10:12 AM

People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.
-V for Vendetta (Hugo Weaving)

Telonius

2011-02-11, 12:33 PM

"Our life is what our thoughts make it." - Marcus Aurelius

"Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning." - Joseph Campbell

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." - Marcus Aurelius

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Adults are obsolete children." - Dr. Seuss

Cyrion

2011-02-11, 03:21 PM

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
-Winston Churchill

arguskos

2011-02-11, 03:30 PM

"We play with the toys the gods give us. You have your sword, I have my tricks."
-Odysseus, as played by Sean Bean

It's a silly quote, taken out of context, but I still really like it. I'm bad at quotes, I think. :smallsigh:

Asta Kask

2011-02-11, 05:11 PM

This one is definitely going to make you blink and go "wow!"...

Well Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn't very much in it one way or the other as far as one can see, at this stage.

Kallisti

2011-02-11, 05:12 PM

"Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime/And departing leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time..."
--A Psalm of Life, Longfellow.

"A man chooses. A slave obeys."
--Bioshock.

"What can change the nature of a man?"
--Ravel Puzzlewell, Planescape: Torment

"Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be Hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain."
--Terry Pratchett

Castaras

2011-02-11, 05:17 PM

"Things happen, what the hell." - Terry Pratchett, [can't remember which book. Small Gods, I believe.]

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." - Frank Zappa

Kuma Kode

2011-02-11, 05:25 PM

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." -- Carl Sagan

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." -- Carl Sagan

Acheron

2011-02-11, 05:43 PM

"When the remarkable becomes bizarre, reason turns rancid." -- Cheshire Cat (American McGee's Alice)

"Only the insane equate pain with success." -- Cheshire Cat (American McGee's Alice)

"If ignorance is bliss, I must be ecstatic." -- Alice (American McGee's Alice)

"What is more immoral than war?" -- Marquis de Sade

"Although my heart may be weak, it's not alone. It's grown with each new experience. And it's found a home with all the friends I've made. I've become a part of their heart, just as they've become a part of mine. And if they think of me now and then, if they don't forget me, then our hearts will be one. I don't need a weapon. My friends are my power!" -- Sora (Kingdom Hearts)

Asta Kask

2011-02-11, 06:28 PM

[H]ow melancholy, if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge—that a man should have lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general: and for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of realities.

Plato

Drakevarg

2011-02-11, 06:45 PM

When I first became a Paladin, I thought in terms of black and white. I see now that it's really a spectrum of greys, and that plenty of people straddle my arbitrary line between good and evil.
But you know what? Those people aren't my problem. My job is to sniff out those who live their lives far enough away from that line that I need to squint to see any light, and then kick their ass in a manner most righteous.
- Unknown

Awesome. That one's me.

"If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions." - Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction

"The internet is full of many things. You, me, and someone looking up pregnant Megaman pictures, for example." - Cleverbot

"A king may move a man, a father may claim a son. But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convinient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that." - King Baldwin IV, Kingdom of Heaven

"Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they are frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously." - XKCD

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part." - William Somerset, Se7en

GenericGuy

2011-02-11, 07:08 PM

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” Oscar Wilde:smalltongue:

And now for something more depressing and long.

"In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature's every-day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and, in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures.[...] Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people, perhaps the prospect of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. Such are Nature's dealings with life." John Stuart Mills

Toastkart

2011-02-11, 09:05 PM

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.” ~ Don Delillo

“You save yourself or you remain unsaved.” ~ Alice Sebold (Lucky)

“Because there is no land of tolerance. There is no peace. Not here, not anywhere else.” ~ Magneto (X-men)

“Human experience does not lend itself to the authoritative claims of either religion or science.” ~ Alan Bullock (The Humanist Tradition in the West)

"Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness." -Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)

Dasein indicates that man is the being who is there and implies also that he has a “there” in the sense that he can know he is there and can take a stand with reference to that fact. The “there” moreover is not just any place, but the particular “there” that is mine, the particular point in time as well as space of my existence at this given moment.” ~ Rollo May (The Discovery of Being)

Calmness

2011-02-11, 10:31 PM

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bull****. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” ~ Jim Morrison

Marillion

2011-02-11, 11:28 PM

All from The Last Unicorn:

"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
~Schmendrick the Magician

"I always say perserverance is nine-tenths of any art--not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course."
~Mabruk the Wizard

"You are losing my interest and that is very dangerous. In a moment I will have forgotten you quite entirely, and will never be able to remember just what I did with you. What I forget not only ceases to exist, but never really existed in the first place."
~King Haggard

"That is most of it, being a wizard--seeing and listening. The rest is technique."
~Schmendrick the Magician

"It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space--that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it."
~The Skull

"When I was alive, I believed--as you do--that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls."
~The Skull

"Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed."
~Schmendrick the Magician

And others:

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players*, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

*i.e., everybody
~Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.
And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot...No, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human...
Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield...
...forever.
~Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

“You know,” he said, “I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.”
~ Shadow, American Gods by Neil Gaiman

"Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?"
~Pozzo, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all."
~Waiting for Godot

"Be your own light, your own refuge. Believe only that which you test for yourself. Do not accept authority merely because it comes from a great man, or is written in a sacred book, for truth is different for each man and woman."
~Siddhartha Gautama

"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."
~Siddhartha Guatama

"Budo (the Martial Way) is not felling the opponent by our force; nor is it a tool to lead the world into destruction with arms. True budo is to accept the spirit of the universe, keep the peace of the world, correctly produce, protect, and cultivate all things in Nature."
~Morihei Ueshiba

arguskos

2011-02-12, 12:21 AM

"Hi. I'm Mike. Sometimes, I'm an *******."
"That's fine by me. The interesting people always are."
-Mike and PeeJee, from Something*Positive, the Oct 30, 2004 strip

I always thought this exchange was very true. PeeJee's right. Everyone interesting is pretty much a prick in one way or another. Makes life fun.

Lord Raziere

2011-02-12, 12:31 AM

"You know all those old men and their wisdom upon life and everything?
Yea ignore them, make your own wisdom."

"If logic was all that was needed to mend the world, then we would already be half way to utopia."

"Rebellion is not about destruction or defeating "The Man" or the establishment. It is about you and your individuality and the freeing of yourself from what is bad and finding what is good. Rebel and find a better world- or better, create one."

DeadManSleeping

2011-02-12, 12:47 AM

I always thought this exchange was very true. PeeJee's right. Everyone interesting is pretty much a prick in one way or another. Makes life fun.

Sadly, so is everyone boring :smallamused:

I really have no quotes of true profundity. But here are some that come close:

Panel 3 ('cuz it's too long to repost here): http://xkcd.com/137/

"If I had the answers to all life's mysteries, would I be considered wise, or a know-it-all?"
-Liz Walsh, author of Tao of Geek

Altaria87

2011-02-12, 02:43 PM

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful, without having to believe there are also fairies at the bottom of it?"- Douglas Adams

"I'm not only telling you now, I'm warning you - the law is nature. The law is only a word for what has a right to happen."- Alfieri, from A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller

"All the law is not in a book."- Marco, also from A View From the Bridge

"Go beyond the impossible, and kick reason to the curb!"- Kamina

"To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction."- Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice

Adumbration

2011-02-12, 02:49 PM

"Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be Hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain."
--Terry Pratchett

If I am not completely incorrect, you took that one from my sig I had a little while back. Is that right? It's not the most common of Pratchettian quotes. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: Contributing:

GRANT ME
THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT
THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE,
COURAGE
TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN
AND WISDOM ALWAYS
TO TELL THE
DIFFERENCE.
I found it in Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut and slightly modified it to be more appropriate for these forums. (Apparently originally a prayer.)

Traab

2011-02-12, 02:52 PM

Till shade is gone, till water is gone
Into the Shadow with teeth bared
Screaming defiance with my last breath
To spit into Sightblinders eye on the last day
By my honor and the Light
My life will be a dagger for Sightblinders heart
Until the Last Day
To Shayol Ghul itself.

The Wheel of Time

On the surface it isnt that impressive, but if you honestly think about what those words mean, and what it takes to follow them, I know I get chills at the thought of that sort of dedication. Which is funny since the name of the people who made up that saying MEANS Dedicated.

RandomNPC

2011-02-12, 08:13 PM

"I work to create a better world. I am a horrible person, I have no delusions about that. With the things I have done, there is no place in this better world for me, but I will create it." ~ The Operative (Serenity)

This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their violence and murder will foam up about their waists and all the murderers and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"...
... And I'll look down and whisper "No."
Rorschach
(Slightly modified in case of issues with board rules, better safe than sorry and all...)

CrimsonAngel

2011-02-12, 10:48 PM

There are a few quotes I've gotten I thought were pretty cool. :smallredface:

"With a name like Cloud, it's hard to imagine how your parents predicted your homosexuality at such an early age."
-Zexion in the fanfiction Save The Kittens! (Yeah, shut up. It was really good.) ... Yaoi! :D

"That's the smartest thing I've heard since the last time I opened my mouth!"
-Kranxx from The Ghosts of Ascalon.

ZombyWoof

2011-02-12, 10:54 PM

Let's see...

"Make the NPCs and other players scream "Oh no, it's C.o.D.zilla!!!!!" -- Radical Taoist

"Now, now, in **** Morris' defense he is a lying sack of ****." -- Jon Stewart

Starting the KotoR 2 section (because the prose of Obsidian has no equal):

"It is difficult sometimes for others to truly speak their heart or listen to it. The words often prove difficult, or they do not come at all."--Brianna

"It is such a quiet thing to fall... but far more terrible as to admit it. " -- Kreia

"Do not see every enemy as an enemy—see them instead as an ally, whether they know it or not" -- Kreia

"o you will do nothing? Apathy is death. Worse than death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects." -- Kreia (Plant-ghosts.)

""And what is it you think you have accomplished? If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself … and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards. You stole that struggle from them, cheapened it. If you care for others, then dispense with pity and sacrifice and recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles. And when they triumph, they will be even stronger for the victory." -- Kreia

""This wound … it is a physical thing, and will fade with time. It was necessary … some things may only be learned from sacrifice."" -- Kreia

"Yes... and what are they without the Force? Take the greatest Jedi Knight, strip away the Force, and what remains? They rely on it, depend on it, more than they know. Watch as one tries to hold a blaster, as they try to hold a lightsaber, and all you will see is nothing more than a woman -- or a man. A child." -- Kreia

(Incidentally, the end of this was one of the most powerful moments in gaming history for me... "All you will see is nothing more than a woman -- or a man. A child.")

A few on Love:

"Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less." -- Rabbi Julius Gordon

" When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you.
When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you. When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you. Now that I love you, I'm afraid of losing you." -- Anonymous

"You are at the beginning of your life, perhaps you will have many loves, but if you are fortunate, you will have only one love." -- Jolee Bindo

"Tickling is the gateway drug to sex." -- Meaux_Pas

"And so the hero... married. And for one day at least, the troubles of a hard world were put aside." -- Fable

"I also don't view love as a well that runs dry, but a spring that keeps giving and renews itself constantly." -- Rachael Garrett

"Here I have found what I sought not indeed, but finding I would possess for ever. For it is above all gold and silver, and beyond all jewels. Neither rock, nor steel, nor the fires of Morgoth, nor all the powers of the Elf-kingdoms, shall keep from me the treasure that I desire. For Lúthien your daughter is the fairest of all the Children of the World." -- Beren

On strength or life in general:

"Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken." -- Warren Buffet

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill." -- Sun Tzu

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
-Dr.Seuss (!!! for truth)

" I don't swear for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. We've got to use all the words we've got. Besides, there are damn few words anybody understands" -- Henry Drummond

"Heroes and tyrants rise and fall, and historians sort out the pieces… don't go thinking that this war — your war — is any more important than any other war simply because you're in it."
--- Jolee Bindo

"What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause? To use their own knowledge against them."
―Bastila Shan —

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? " Matthew 6:27

And those are just some of my favorites that I have on hand.

rayne_dragon

2011-02-13, 06:48 PM

Just saw this one:

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."

~ Frederick Douglass

Kain05

2011-02-13, 07:01 PM

So if I could I'd wish it all away
If I thought tomorrow would take you away.
You, my piece of mind, my all, my center,
just trying to hold on one more day.

-MJK

Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any
Sense of compassion
Between supposed lovers

-MJK

Blue Bandit

2011-02-13, 07:08 PM

These are some of my favorite quotes.

"Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."
-John Wayne

"Talk low, Talk slow, and don't talk too much."
-John Wayne

"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”
-Albert Einstein

"Life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party."
-Jimmy Buffett

Necroticplague

2011-02-14, 10:11 AM

I collect these, so prepare for a large dump.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry A. Kissinger

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
Herodotus

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
George Santayana

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
Omar N. Bradley

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.
George Herbert

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Anonymous

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.
Jane Wagner

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Anonymous

There are no short cuts to any place worth going.
Anonymous

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark Twain

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
Mark Twain

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Confucius

Asta Kask

2011-02-14, 12:19 PM

"To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a goblin. Hath
not a goblin eyes? hath not a goblin hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a human is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a goblin wrong a human,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a human
wrong a goblin, what should his sufferance be by
human example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction."- Redcloak

FTFY

(You must admit if fits him to a t)

RedDeerJebediah

2011-02-14, 03:08 PM

“The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy— everything. […] There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
- O'Brien, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

"Why is it difficult for so many people to listen? Why do they start talking when there's something to hear? Do they have their ears not on the sides of their heads, but situated inside their mouths, so that when they hear something their first impulse is to start talking?"
- John Cage

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
- Tom Waits

Archonic Energy

2011-02-14, 03:13 PM

Since it's Valentines Day...

Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope... Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds

Keld Denar

2011-02-14, 03:58 PM

I like beer. It makes me a jolly good fellow.
- Tom T Hall

Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin

I do not envy people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day.
- Frank Sinatra

I've stopped drinking, but only while I'm asleep.
- George Best

What whiskey won't cure, there is no cure for.
- Anon

CrimsonAngel

2011-02-14, 04:14 PM

I do not envy people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day.
- Frank Sinatra

I see a few flaws in this quote. :smallannoyed:

dehro

2011-02-14, 04:31 PM

Terry Pratchett is a treasure trove for quotes..
also, no quotes thread can be complete without

"my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!"

Drynwyn

2011-02-14, 04:33 PM

"Man is free the moment he wishes to be."
-Voltaire

zeratul

2011-02-14, 04:42 PM

I love a qood quote. Some of my favorites are these

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost ~ J.R.R Tolkein

I am a teller of stories, a weaver of dreams. I can dance, sing, and in the right weather I can stand on my head. I know seven words of Latin, I have a little magic, and a trick or two. I know the proper way to meet a Dragon, I can fight dirty but not fair, I once swallowed thirty oysters in a minute. I am not domestic, I am a luxury, and in that sense, necessary. ~ The Storyteller

If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right away according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country. Hold up your head. You have nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Mark Twain

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire,With a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? Therefore, if you have the capacity to suffer or rejoice with the generation that had been, to hate with them, to love with them, to be transported, to admire, to despise,To curse as they have done. In a word, to live among them with your whole heart and not alone with your cold, reflecting judgement, then follow me. I will lead you down into the well. My hand is weak, and my sketch humble, but your heat will lead you better than I. Upon that I rely, and begin, ~ Zachris Topelius

It gladdens me to know that Balder’s father makes ready the benches for a banquet. Soon we shall be drinking ale from the curved horns. The champion who comes into Odin’s dwelling does not lament his death. I shall not enter his hall with words of fear upon my lips. The Æsir will welcome me. Death comes without lamenting… Eager am I to depart. The Dísir summon me home, those whom Odin sends for me from the halls of the Lord of Hosts. Gladly shall I drink ale in the high-seat with the Æsir. The days of my life are ended. I laugh as I die. ~ Ragnar Lodbrok

Acheron

2011-02-14, 07:03 PM

"Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves. No matter what the circumstances of life are, there are no justifications and there never will be any. But people look for justifications and they find them. All people have been taught to do that, and they've all proved diligent pupils." -- Night Watch (Novel by Sergey Lukyanenko)

"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." -- Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Dune)

"Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known." -- Frank Herbert (Dune)

"How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him." The Collected Sayings of Muad'dib by the Princess Irulan (Dune)

"Life - all life - is in the service of life." Pardot Kynes (Dune)

"A world is supported by four things ... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing ... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!" Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Dune)