Great quotes in literature

[Chaos]

I originally intended to start a literature quote quiz, like the movie quote one, but I figured that would be too difficult.

So let´s just have a "greatest quotes in literature" thread.

Please state the quote, (and perhaps an explanation of the context) title, and author. All genres, fiction and non-fiction alike, are allowed.

Some of my favorites:

"Not bad. But next time, try to leave the vendor alive."
(Trying to teach a barbarian how to shop)
Interesting Times
Terry Pratchett

"If you think this is heresy, wait until I´m finished."
(the reforming of a mystic order)
Dark Destiny
Michael Stackpole

"A hawk and a dove do not fly together - except if the hawk is hungry."
Polgara the Sorceress
David Eddings

[Hexxenhammer]

"Satan receive my soul. Jesus is a fink."
Alex Hergeshiemer in Heinlein's "Job"

[Jabberwock]

"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

-F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

[Brian]

"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up."
Huckleberry Finn
-Mark Twain

Doesn't seem like much, but when read in context and you understand what decision has convinced Huck that he's going to burn in hell, and he makes it anyway, it's beautiful thing.

That's one of the greatest books in American Literature and I recommend it to everybody.

[Phil]

I just read these words a few seconds before finding this thread. And I think they fit so well the personality of these forums:

"That day, I began to be incredulous.

Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity."

--- Umberto Eco

Foucault's Pendulum

[Soapy Sam]

That's one of the greatest books in American Literature and I recommend it to everybody.


Brian, I agree, except insofar as the word "American" is superfluous in this particular case.

[SteveW]

From hell's heart I stab at thee.

- Moby Dick (or Star Trek II, depending on your literacy level).

[Brian]

Originally posted by SteveW
From hell's heart I stab at thee.

- Moby Dick (or Star Trek II, depending on your literacy level).

Also from that book...
"I would strike the sun if it offended me."
-Ahab

[Sane]

Originally posted by SteveW
From hell's heart I stab at thee.

- Moby Dick (or Star Trek II, depending on your literacy level).

Or The Simpson's. Shows you just where my literacy level lies.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

"If his chest had been a canon he would have shot his heart upon it."-Moby Dick

"The things' hollow, it goes on forever and oh- my god, its full of stars!"-2001: A Space Odyssey

[LucyR]

Have you noticed that most of our poor American friends always choose the same few writers when it comes to these sort of threads?

[epepke]

Originally posted by LucyR
Have you noticed that most of our poor American friends always choose the same few writers when it comes to these sort of threads?

Have you noticed that this thread has only ten responses, including mine?

[LucyR]

6 out of 8 is significant wouldn't you say? Particularly when one is aware that a similar distribution may be found in umpteen similar threads.

[Some Friggin Guy]

A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment.
When his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had
passed and was rushing landward. Big iron upperworks rose
out of this headlong structure, and from that twin funnels
projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the
torpedo ram, THUNDER CHILD, steaming headlong, coming to
the rescue of the threatened shipping. War of the Worlds.

I'm not sure why, but this passage always hits me when I read this.

[Sane]

Also from HG Wells. This Invisible Man passage always stuck with me...

Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging between heaven and earth, six yards away. “What am I to do?” he said sullenly.

Life is sweet.

[Phil]

Originally posted by LucyR
Have you noticed that most of our poor American friends always choose the same few writers when it comes to these sort of threads?
No, I haven't noticed. But then I haven't been involved in other similar threads.

I have noticed, however, that generalizing in such a manner can make one seem pretentious and snooty in any thread. Have you noticed that?

[wollery]

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.I'm not generally a great fan of Dickens, but this is one of the best book openings I've ever read.

[SteveW]

Originally posted by LucyR
Have you noticed that most of our poor American friends always choose the same few writers when it comes to these sort of threads?

Maybe it's because Melville is a far greater writer than any of the poop that ever came out of your country?

[LucyR]

Originally posted by SteveW


Maybe it's because Melville is a far greater writer than any of the poop that ever came out of your country?

Probably, yes.

Methinks I touched a nerve. ;)

[Mr Manifesto]

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kahn, daruber muB mann schweigen", Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Oh... My German is even worse than my French... Sorry if I completely butchered the quoted, Ludwig's name, and the title of his work.

edit Not only that, but I don't know what the default font is on JREF, so I can't get the German character for 'ss' to work. Sorry about using the capital B as a substitute. :(

[Michael Redman]

Thucydides, commenting on prophecy:Such was the nature of the calamity, and heavily did it weigh on the Athenians; death raging within the city and devastation without. Among other things which they remembered in their distress was, very naturally, the following verse which the old men said had long ago been uttered:

A Dorian war shall come and with it death.

So a dispute arose as to whether dearth and not death had not been the word in the verse; but at the present juncture, it was of course decided in favour of the latter; for the people made their recollection fit in with their sufferings. I fancy, however, that if another Dorian war should ever afterwards come upon us, and a dearth should happen to accompany it, the verse will probably be read accordingly.The History of the Peloponnesian War, Chapter 7

[SteveW]

And just so I won't show my "poor" American ignorance and a penchant for Melville, I have always loved:

Wer reitet so spat durch nacht und wind, er ist der vater mit seinen kind.

And the last line still gives me the creeps:

Und in sienen armen, das kind,

war todt!

Nothing like a good Goethe poem on a dark and stormy night.

But then again, we poor ignorant Americans don't read other great literature ;(

[SteveW]

And it also occured to me, its ANY line in Salome.

Favorite though has to be:

I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan.

[Frostbite]

“North of the transverse gap, he drove into the huge sink of Candor Chasma, and now it was as if he were in a gigantic replica of the Painted Desert, with great deposition layers everywhere, bands of purple and yellow sediments, orange dunes, red erratics, pink sands, indigo gullies – truly a fantastic, extravagant landscape, disorienting to the eye because all the wild colors made it hard to figure out what was what, and how big it was, and how far away. Giant plateaus that seemed about to block his way would turn out to be curving strata on a distant cliff; small boulders next to the transponders would turn out to be enormous mesas half a day’s drive away. And in the sunset light all the colors blazed, the whole Martian spectrum revealed and blazing as if color was bursting out of the rock, everything from pale yellow to dark bruised purple. Candor Chasma! He was going to have to come back some time and explore it.”

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

[Kerberos]

"this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you successed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you."

Machiavelli
The Prince

[sorgoth]

Originally posted by Kerberos
"this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you successed they are yours entirely;


successed?

[Ælfgifu]

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

George Orwell
1984

Have a nice day,
Kelly :)

[Bonobo Boy]

"Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

Fitting for these boards, methinks ;).

[Ed]

"They promised us peace and gave us a desolation"

Tacitus -The Germania

Also my sig from Daniel Deronda.

[Virgil]

Originally posted by Chaos


"A hawk and a dove do not fly together - except if the hawk is hungry."
Polgara the Sorceress
David Eddings

I read all of D. Eddings books a long time ago. he has 3-4 ca. 6 books series. they weren't really great but they were real solid and I liked them.


Virgil

[Kerberos]

Originally posted by sorgoth



successed?
Damn, In my Danish translation it says roughly "as long as they benefit from you", but I was unsure of how to translate the passage, so I found it in English and copy-pasted, serves me right for not checking. :(

[Graham]

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

Douglas Adams


That always makes me giggle. That and the line from Hitchhikers about the guy who got lyched by a mob of rampaging physicists.

:D

Graham

[Mike B.]

"Come Watson, The game is afoot."

Sherlock Holmes in the opening of "The Abby Grange" by Arthur Conan Doyle.

(I suppose you could also credit the Bard from Henry V)
;)

[Timble]

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

Political revisionism in 'Animal Farm' George Orwell

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, that specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of the clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "

Joseph Heller, guess the book

"Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself."

Kurt Vonnegut Sirens of Titan, a credo of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent (IIRC)

[zer0vector]

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, that specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of the clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "


Great quote and book, here's another good one from the same:

"Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other country in the world can make that statement. Think about it." He waited a moment to permit them to think about it.

[Oregon_Skeptic]

Great idea for a thread. I know Moby-Dick has already been quoted often, but it then again deserves to be. I have always loved The Quarter-Deck, chapter 36, particularly Ahab’s lines. They are such fun to read aloud:

“Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perditions’ flam before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts
black blood and rolls fin out.”

And from another large, sweeping novel that deals with a grand quest:

“Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.”

Ellison’s Invisible Man

[Beanbag]

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you.

But first they must catch you."

Watership Down

[FIfteen Iguana]

Oh, this is a fun one...

"Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them." -Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

"Here I was, swimming in paperwork with my hands tied, and out on the street were jerks on parade: unassuming, pleasant, perfectly normal people except that they had an extra bone in their head and less moral sense than God gave badgers." -Garrison Keiller, "The Current Crisis in Remorse"

"Good manners are a sign of strength." -Dick Francis, Proof

"A Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull." -Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel

"Love means having something to betray." -John LeCarre, The Perfect Spy

"Unfortunately, he was not very skillful at expressing himself in Russian (although he knew no other language)." -Feodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

"When you deny something your power is much more conspicuous than when you approve it." -Vladimir Voinovich, The Ivankiad

"How dare you stand there with every evidence of a criminal nature showing in your attitude and demeanor and conceal from the authorities the reason for your arrest?" -Don Marquis, Archyology II

"I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud." -Kurt Vonnegut, jr. Cat's Cradle

"Life is not fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all." -William Goldman, in The Princess Bride

"What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?" -Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men

"Let Lawyers, Parsons, and Physicians loose, to rob, impose on, and to kill the World." -Henry Fielding, in Tom Thumb

"Money can't buy off the lightning." -Stephen King, The Dead Zone

"I am too old and stiff-necked to change my memories now." -Willard R. Espy , Oysterville

[Cleopatra]

I don't know what makes a good quote in Literature. Maybe a well written phrase is enough.

Anyway take those two for starters and I will think of more

"I truthfully feel none of us have anyone to blame for whatever we have done with our own personal lives. It has been proven that at the age of 7 most of us have reached the age of reason -- which means we do, at this age, understand and know the difference between right and wrong. Of course -- environment plays an awfully important part in our lives such as the Convent in mine and in my case I am grateful for that influence. In Jimmy's case -- he was the strongest of us all. I remember how he worked and went to school when there was no one to tell him and it was his own WILL to make something of himself. We will never know the reasons for what eventually happened, why he did what he did, but I still hurt thinking of it. It was such a waste. But we have very little control over our human weaknesses, and this applies also to Fern and hundreds of thousands of other people including ourselves -- for we all have weaknesses. In your case -- I don't know what your weakness is but I do feel -- IT IS NO SHAME TO HAVE A DIRTY FACE -- THE SHAME COMES WHEN YOU KEEP IT DIRTY.

Truman Kapote -- In Cold Blood"

The next one is a favorite. Bold face mine.

"What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book A Farewell to Arms last summer. He said it was so terrific. That's what I can't understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don't see how D.B. could hate the Army and war and all so much and still like a phony like that. I mean, for instance, I don't see how he could like a phony like that and still like that one by Ring Lardner, or that other one he's so crazy about, The Great Gatsby. D.B. got sore when I said that, and said I was too young and all to appreciate it, but I don't think so. I told him I liked Ring Lardner and The Great Gatsby and all. I did, too. I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

Salinger,The Catcher in the Rye "

[bjornart]

I like this passage from Pratchett's Hogfather (Caps intentional):

All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable.'

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - '

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

'So we can believe the big ones?'

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

'They're not the same at all!'

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

The rest of the passage can be found at http://www.geocities.com/hogswatch_grotto/meaning1.htm (or better yet, in Hogfather :D)

[hgc]

From A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'EngleWell, the fifth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. Just a little plug for children's literature that can blow a kid's mind. :)

[LuxFerum]

War and peace- book nine- chapter I (http://tolstoy.thefreelibrary.com/War-and-Peace/9-1)
From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces- millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army- moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

[JAR]

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive." -- Sherlock Holmes in Part 1 Chapter 1 of A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[Doghouse Reilly]

"A man in the blue-grey jail uniform came along between the
cells reading numbers. He stopped in front of mine and unlocked
the door and gave me the hard stare they think they have to
wear on their pans for ever and for ever and for ever. I'm a cop,
brother, I'm tough, watch your step, brother, or we'll fix you up
so you'll crawl on your hands and knees, brother, snap out of it,
brother, let's get a load of the truth, brother, let's go, and let's not
forget we're tough guys, we're cops, and we do what we like
with punks like you."

Raymond Chandler

[LuxFerum]

A tale of two cities - Charles Dickens (http://dickens.thefreelibrary.com/Tale-Of-Two-Cities/3-9)


"If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night,

'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?"

[Lord Muck oGentry]

"Ah, is there not a danger of overlooking matters of almost equal importance?"-Kyril Bonfiglioli, stealing shamelessly and gleefully from the divine Ernest Bramah.

[Cleopatra]

Two quotes from Iris Murdoch's "The Black Prince" although this book as it is a philosophical novel( a book about a mad love affaire, Plato and Shakespeare) has nothing but passages that worth to be quoted.

Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins. It is at once one of the ugliest and one of the most pardonable. In fact, in relation to its badness it is probably the most pardonable. Zeus, who smiles at lovers' oaths, must also condone their pangs and the venom which these pangs engender.Some Frenchman said that jealousy was born with love, but did not always die with love. I am not sure whether this is true. I would think that where there is jealousy there is love.
[...]
The idea that one recovers from being in love is, of course, by definition ( by my definition anyway) excluded from the state of love. Besides, one does not always recover.

[Skeptic]

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

"100 years of soltitute"

"Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All."

Alexcander Pope, "The Dunciad".

[JAR]

"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n" ---Satan in "Paradise Lost" I: 263 by Milton(I first learned about this quote from the Star Trek episode called the "Space Seed" starring Ricardo Montalban as Khan)

"Most people who pass through this world wish for nothing better than worldly success: the only heaven they think about is on earth." ---- Lady Holy Church in "Piers the Ploughman" I: 7-9 by William Langland(from the translation by J.F. Goodridge). Once I became an atheist, this applied to me. Atheism liberated me from the belief that extremely selfless behavior would benefit me in the end. [edited to add: Now that I think about it, it applied to me even when I was a Christian.]

[JAR]

"And this[i.e. the Thames] also, " said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places on the earth."......."I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago[I have not included the middle part to make the quote shorter] Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga - perhaps too much dice, you know - coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed around him, - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men." - Marlow in "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.

[Brian]

"and Olaf on what once were knees
does almost ceaselessly repeat
there is some **** I will not eat"

e.e. cummings

[Marian]

"Good hunting!" said Phao, as though Akela were still alive, and then over his bitten shoulder to the others: "Howl, dogs! A Wolf has died to-night!"


-The Second Jungle Book (Death of Akela), Rudyard Kipling

Always brings tears to my eyes.

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love , Robert A. Heinlein

The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, withou a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein

And a personal favorite, though slightly off topic...

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
-Søren Kierkegaard

[Cleopatra]

" Gosh, what big words you know, Mister. I mean "Doctor"".
"Mister is correct. On this campus it is swank to assume that everybody holds a doctorate. Even I have one, Oh.. Do you know what that stands for?"
"Doesn't everybody? I have a Ph.D too. "Piled Higher and Deeper".

Robert Heinlein, The Number of the Beast.

[demon]

"The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

(First line of "The Go-Between", L. P. Hartley.)



"In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea."

("A Forsaken Garden", Swinburne.)

[gjones2]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kahn, daruber muB mann schweigen", Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen." [Rough translation: What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.]

Some may claim that Wittgenstein waited far too long to say that. :-) It comes at the end of his book.

Actually I don't believe that there's a sharp line between what we can say (have the capability to say) and what we can't, certainly not one that we can know precisely ahead of time. Most of us speak and write not because we have something to say but in hopes of saying something. We give it a try, starting at best with a vague notion of what we "can" say. Only afterwards, when we've submitted what we've said to rigorous analysis, do we know to what degree we succeeded (and in some cases it will still be a matter of personal opinion).

I would add a literary quotation of my own, but to quote Bartleby, "I would prefer not to." (Also I'm an American, so all the books that I've read have already been mentioned. ;-).

[bluess]

"Lord Emsworth, that amiable yet bone-headed peer, stood at his window drooping like a wet sock."

P.G. Wodehouse, 'The Crime Wave at Blandings Castle'

'My name is Psmith. The 'p' is silent, as in ptarmigan and pneumonia.'

P.G. Wodehouse, 'Leave it to Psmith'

[gjones2]

The Erasmus line and the name Psmith remind me of this one:

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." [Logan Pearsall Smith]

[Temporal Renegade]

"We...speak...with tongues of steel rather than of flesh."

Chessmen of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
(How a Warrior from the nation of Gathol would 'converse' with their enemies.)

[Temporal Renegade]

If so, here's my favourite quote from The Sandman:


"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."

-- The Sandman "The Kindly Ones"

[Piscivore]

Originally posted by George Orwell
He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.

[ggcarl]

From The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth:

"My dear fellow," Burlingame said, "we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma?"

[Ossai]

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays and 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.

* ie., everybody.


from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

[Hand Bent Spoon]

"--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink."