Favorite Quotations

[thestrangewinston]

"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do." - Voltaire

“Everyone is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” -David Foster Wallace

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporality embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” -Mark Twain

And three non-lit quotes:

"People are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling." -Bob Kelso

"Religion is like having a penis. There is nothing wrong with having one or being proud of it, but you never whip it out in public and wave it around, and you shouldn't shove it down children's throats. "

“All i’m saying is that if i ever start referring to these as the best years of my life… remind me to kill myself.”

[Dobby]

"Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game." - Michael Jordan.

[pjthefey]

Most of my favorite quotes come from popular rather than classic literature.

That said... "Always dress your best, you never know when you might make history." - Mercedes Lackey

Here are two quotes from Bram Stoker's Dracula that I love because they are hilarious, but sadly I'm not sure they were supposed to be.

"Do not fear ever to think. A half thought has been buzzing often in my brain, but I fear to let him loose his wings. Here now, with more knowledge, I go back to where that half thought come from and I find that he be no half thought at all. That be a whole thought, though so young that he is not yet strong to use his little wings. Nay, like the ‘Ugly Duck’ of my friend Hans Andersen, he be no duck thought at all, but a big swan thought that sail nobly on big wings, when the time come for him to try them. "

Translation: "Double rainbow! Oh my god! Double rainbow across the sky; it's full on! In my front yard! "
(For those of you who did not get the reference see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI , and www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g0yZDMBXiE)


Dracula Quote #2:
"There I have hope that our man brains that have been of man so long and that have not lost the grace of God, will come higher than his child-brain that lie in his tomb for centuries, that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only work selfish and therefore small. Here comes Madam Mina. Not a word to her of her trance! She knows it not, and it would overwhelm her and make despair just when we want all her hope, all her courage, when most we want all her great brain which is trained like man’s brain, but is of sweet woman and have a special power which the Count give her, and which he may not take away altogether, though he think not so. Hush! Let me speak, and you shall learn. ... The little bird, the little fish, the little animal learn not by principle, but empirically. And when he learn to do, then there is to him the ground to start from to do more. ‘Dos pou sto,’ said Archimedes. ‘Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!’ To do once, is the fulcrum whereby child brain become man brain. And until he have the purpose to do more, he continue to do the same again every time, just as he have done before!"

[Insert facepalm here.]

Sexism aside, "Man Brain" is a term that is begging for a Zombie parody.

[cyanea]

Van Helsing is the reason that while I love Dracula, the Dracula mythos, and everything associated with Dracula...I hate the book. Stoker went overboard with dialects and slang (the old people that Mina talk to near the beginning make me cringe everytime). Van Helsing, I think, is supposed to not speak anything more than basic English in that same vein. Totally fine, but he's one of the most important characters, has the lion's share of the dialog, and is the source for all the explanation of what Dracula is and vampires are. That and the constant sexism about Mina makes me skip whole pages in the last few hundred or so whenever I'm forced to read it.

[Annie Ozone]

"A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons." Desmond Tutu

"She had already learned that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you." Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our own existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov

[Deleted]

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams."
-- He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, W. B. Yeats

[iamahexagon]

"Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" kidding, kidding...

"Don't worry about the world ending today, it's already tomorrow in Australia" - Charles Schultz

"There are 3 kinds of people: People who can count and those that can't." -Unknown (at least to me)

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli."- George Bush

"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining, or testing your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live." - Dave Carhart

[adeia]

"We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it." -Anthony Burgess

'"All revelations are personal.” she said. “That’s why all revelations are suspect."' -American Gods

"Bart, I'm not thrilled either, but one day we might need each other for organ transplants so we better keep the lines of communication open" -Lisa Simpson

[alyoshka]

Since I am a hopeless romantic.. "...her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood."
--James Joyce

[ThatsMyPie]

I'll copy and paste off of my Facebook page:

"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." - Joseph Campbell

"Hard-wired to conceive, so much we'd have to stow it; even needs have needs, tiny giants made of tinier giants." - Modest Mouse

"Let’s go slowly, discouraged, we’ll burn the pictures instead. When it’s all over we can barely discuss, for one minute only." - Phoenix

"At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie." - The King (The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho)

"Every blessing ignored becomes a curse." - The Old Man (The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho)

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” - The King (The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho)

"Love is like a Rubix Cube, there are countless numbers of wrong twists and turns, but when you get it right, it looks perfect no matter what way you look at it." - Brian Cramer

"Love is the garment of knowledge." - Kenneth Roxroth

"Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.” - G. M. Trevelyan

"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” - Christopher Reeve

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” - Lewis Carroll

“Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

“No one gets very far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.” - Elbert Hubbard

“The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.” - Robert Schuller

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.” - Anonymous

“In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.” - Miguel de Cervantes

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” - Paulo Coelho

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” - Walt Disney

"The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms." - Muriel Rukeyser

"The universe is infinite in all directions, not only above us in the large but also below us in the small. If we start from our human scale of existence and explore the content of the universe further and further, we finally arrive, both in the large and the small, at misty distances where first our senses and then even our concepts fail us." - Emil Wiechert

"In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." - T. E. Lawrence

"I tell people I'm too stupid to know what's impossible. I have ridiculously large dreams, and half the time they come true." - Debi Thomas

"No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams." - Jesse Jackson

"Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real." - Tupac Shakur

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference." - Nolan Bushnell

"People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year." - Peter Drucker

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!" - Audrey Hepburn

"I love those who yearn for the impossible." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done." - Robert A. Heinlein

"Open up your plans and damn your free" - Jason Mraz

"Which would you rather have: Foolish sanity or wise madness?" - Miguel de Cervantes

"I've been thinking a lot lately about taking chances, and how it's really about overcoming your fears. Because the truth is, every time you take a big risk in your life, no matter how it ends up, you're always glad you took it." - Zach Braff

"Why fear the unknown when you can conquer it?"

"The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"This is either madness or brilliance -- it's remarkable how often those two traits coincide." - Pirates of the Caribbean

"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell them that dragons can be killed." - G.K. Chesterton

"With three insane people, anything is possible." - Cory Lotz (referring to me, him, and Danielle potentially building a bridge)

That's a lot of 'em. Hope y'all don't mind...

[serpentheart]

Just remembered this one. This quote made the novel for me. Beautiful.

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlaying our hard hearts.” - Pip in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations

[tosney]

""How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'? " - Pedro Neruda


"My true religion is kindness" - 14th Dalai Lama


"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone" - Neale Donald Walsch



A long but amusing one on humans:

"Never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo-knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts."
"While collectively..."
"Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial-and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement."

-Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

[Marina]

"If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever." Winnie the Pooh.

"I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left rib, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre.


"Look wicked, Jane; as you know well how to look; coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me you hate me-- tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather be incensed than saddened." Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre

"Fear and realization of ignorance were strong medicines against stupid pride." Sabriel.

[tosney]

"The stupid things you do in life are the most beautiful."
- A long long time ago and essentially true (That's the name of a novel, not a description of the quote).

[leonwingstein]

"Even in the darkness, every color can be found."
-Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Act II

"Remember, you're unique, just like everyone else."
-Warren Miller