Literary Quotes

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Just like movie quotes, but books instead. I guess you *could* use video games as well, as long as it's not spoken dialogue. It's gotta be off a computer monitor (in the game =) or parchment. And off the top of your head, if possible. As short or long as you care, but something that, for whatever reason, just stuck with you.

You dinna' have tah be exact. Just close enough that someone can recognize which book it comes from. And anything goes that's not against the SP rules. Playboy interviews, the Anarchists Cookbook, Wall Street Journal, PC Gamer, Poor Man's Brewery, or the New England Journal of Medicine.

Mine:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of dispair...

 

o where to start? there are so many!

George Orwell, 1984: "sanity isn't statistical"

Terry Pratchet soul music: "The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle"

and the part in David Eddings belgarion (i don't know it exactly but anyways): silk and bril have just fought and silk pushed bril over the wall
Belgarath: what were you doing?
Belgarion: Silk and Bril fought!
Belgarath: Bril? where did he go!
Silk: last time I look he was trying to fly
Belgarath: and did he manage
(a distant bang and then another is heard)
Silk: does bouncing count?
Belgarath: no i'm afraid not
Silk: then i think he didn't learn it in time!

 

"Timshel - Thou Mayest"

John Steinbeck - East of Eden

 

"I will never serve you, Father of Lies. In a thousand lives I never have. I know that. I'm sure of it. Come. It is time to die."
-Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

And where is that winter of despair thing from? I know I've heard it somewhere...

[ November 22, 2002, 21:05: Message edited by: Frostmage ]

 

Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it.
So are you saying we should just give up?
I'm saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open.
Dragons of Autumn Twilight

~OR~

Hell is full of burning boats, did you know that Nadir? Maybe that's what makes it so bloody hot.
Susan Kay's Phantom

~OR~

Get rid of the impossible. Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Sherlock Holmes

~OR~

That's not the point! I am now a perfectly fine penguin and my colleague is rapidly losing his limbs!
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[ November 22, 2002, 21:25: Message edited by: dragonjewel13 ]

 

Dark Oomen: And it will be a time of great strife when the moons are united in darkness and the dead shall walk the earth ones more

 

"Of all the wonders I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men fear that death, a necessary end, shall come when it will come."

WS, Julius Caesar

~ OR ~

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but few men realized when caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were."

MM, GWTW

[ November 22, 2002, 22:01: Message edited by: rallymama ]

 

Your was from a Tale of two towns wasnt it Ejsmith? I cant come up with one at the moment but there are quite a few in WoT that I really like.

This one from Pratchett's The Fifth elephant is quite funny: 'People down in the desert of Klatch would pay good money to have Igor say the word sausage'.

 

"Your was from a Tale of two towns wasnt it Ejsmith? "

Close enough to make no difference.

Kudos!!~!!!

 

"The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!"

 

"Many who live deserve to die, some that die deserve life, can *you* give it to them?"
-JRR Tolkien "LOTR: FOTR"

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them."

"To die, to sleep; to sleep perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub; for in that endless sleep of death, what dreams may come."
-William Shakespeare "Hamlet"

"Cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon behind them, volleyed and thundered."

"Theirs not to question why, theirs not to make reply, theirs but to do and die, into the valley of Death, rode the six hundred."
-Lord Tennyson Alfred "Charge of the Light Brigade"

"But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic..."
-Aldous Huxley "Brave New World"

[ November 23, 2002, 20:44: Message edited by: Faerus Stoneslammer ]

 

Terry Pratchetts feet of clay -

"How's his lordship?"
"Stable sir"
"Dead is stable Littlebottom"
"He's awake and sitting up, sir"

Now i laugh everytime im watchin hospital drama and they say someone has stabilised

 

my brothers mate daryl pissed in our back garden

"why wont the beer garden grow"

 

Lady Bonzo:

I find that funny because it's like, so true on so many levels. Thermodynamics, Chemistry, Chemical engineering. Mathmatics.

Awesome quote.

 

(talking about the different types of rain this lorry driver's been through since leaving Denmark)

Rain type 17 was a dirty blatter battering against his windshield so hard that it didn't make much odds whether he had his wipers on or off.
He tested this theory by turning them off briefly, but as it turned out the visibility did get quite a lot worse. It just failed to get better again when he turned them back on.
In fact one of the wiper blades began to flap off.
Swish swish swish flop swish swish flop swish flop swish flop swish flop flop flop scrape.
He pounded his steering wheel, kicked the floor, thumped his cassette player until it suddenly started playing Barry Manilow, thumped it until it stopped again, and swore and swore and swore and swore and swore.

- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish

 

"And then it developed that Campbell was not going to go unanswered after all. Poor old Derby, the doomed high school teacher, lumbered to his feet for what was probably the finest moment in his life. There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now.

"His stance was that of a punch-drunk fighter. His head was down. His fists were out front, waiting for information and a battle plan. Derby raised his head, called Campbell a snake. He corrected that. He said that snakes couldn't help being snakes, and that Campbell, who could help being what he was, was something much lower than a snake or a rat - or even a blood-filled tick.

"Campbell smiled.

"Derby spoke movingly of the American form of government, with freedom and justice and opportunities and fair play for all. He said there wasn't a man there who wouldn't gladly die for those ideals.

"He spoke of the brotherhood between the American and the Russian people, and how those two nations were going to crush the disease of Nazism, which wanted to infect the whole world.

"The air-raid sirens of Dresden howled mournfully".

 

"Realisation hit her like a brick, she groaned and fell to her knees as it landed beside her"
- Flewinster

Sometimes just taking something old and kicking it a few times does the trick

 

I, born of giants remember very early
those who nurtured me then;
I remember nine worlds, I remember nine giant women,
The mighty measuring tree down below the earth

brother will fight brother and be his slayer,
brother and sister will violate te bond of kinship
hard is the world, there is much adultery
axe-age, sword-age, shields are cleft asunder,
wind-age, wolf-age, before the world plunges headlong
no man will spare another.

The sun turns black, earth sinks into the sea,
the bright stars vanish from the sky;
steam rises up in the conlagration,
a high flame plays against the heaven itself.

Garm bays loudly before Gnipa-cave,
the rope will break and the ravener run free,
much wisdom she knows, I see further ahead
to the terrible doom of the victory-gods

She sees, coming up a second time,
Earth from the ocean, etternally green;
the waterfall plunges, an eagle soars over it,
hunting fish on the mountain.

(stanzas 2, 45,57,58,59 of the "voluspa" the first poem of the poetic edda)

So incredibly inpressive!

 

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome-rath out gabe.

also...

Today is done, today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.