What is your favorite quote? And why?

[Etienne]

"In 1981, I was walking Saint-Denis Street, there I meet a superb prostitute, I ask her name - Socialism. I go up to the room with her, and I realise it's a foul transsexual! He then tells me - take me by the communism!"

-Serge Gainsbourg, translated and slightly adapted by myself

[mazHur]

You don't find a friend in the desert

[dramasnot6]

"Better to light a candle than curse the darkness"

[Etienne]

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas
I like you Plato, but truth even more!

It's Aristotelus quote, and Plato(very famous Greek philosopher) was his teacher.

Hmm? What is the source of this quote? No dialogue between Plato and Aristotle have come down to us, a quick research on the web led me to no result for such a quote... my guess it's that it's very apocryphal :p

[mazHur]

You can imprison a [wo]man but not an idea. You can exile a [wo]man but not an idea. You can kill a [wo]man but not an idea. — Benazir Bhutto

[huihuffaker]

Mine would have to be, "Immediatly after the monsters, die the heroes." -Roberto Calasso. The sacrificial meaning gets me the most. Even though the hero endured great pain to kill the monster, it still saved the person, or thing, that was worth saving. The sacrifice of a true hero lies in the hands of the situation.

[Dori]

I don't believe I've had the pleasure of welcoming you to the forum yet. Welcome, huihuffaker. :)

I don't think this topic belongs in this particular forum. It's probably better suited for the "Who Said That?" forum (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7). In fact, there is a similar thread to that which you started, located here: "What's your fav quote?" (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4). This thread will most likely be merged onto that one.

As for your initial question, I haven't the time to decide which quote I like over another; I have several favorites.

EDIT: I just realized that this topic was moved to the appropriate forum.

[quasimodo1]

"I don't think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn't be." John Betjeman

[dum_spiro_spero]

"To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire--
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid."
Edgar Lee Masters

[Jane Jane]

'Do a thing very well and you will stand before kings.' it is an ancient word of wisdom from I think proverbs in the bible. I like that. It could be the most humble thing, but if you work and work at it and excel people start noticing and sure enough you will find yourself being consulted by those in high places.
Look at Mother Teresa of Calcutta, even that creep Rasputin. He was so good at calming down the little heir to the throne when he had his horrifying attacks of hemophelia that he gained the complete trust of the the Tzarina and ended up interfering through her in politics to the ruin of the Romanov family.
I have a friend who lives a very quiet life. But she bought one rose bush for her garden, it needed something she told me. She knew nothing about roses but she kept looking things up and experimenting and wht not and in about five years she began to win awards for her yard and finally became a consultant on radio and newspaper about the growing and care of roses.

[Etienne]

He was so good at calming down the little heir to the throne when he had his horrifying attacks of hemophelia that he gained the complete trust of the the Tzarina and ended up interfering through her in politics to the ruin of the Romanov family.

There is no such thing as "attack of hemophilia"...

[Jane Jane]

There are several that are my 'favorite' but two are dear to me.
They are both from the tiny dynamo Mother Theresa of Calcutta:

"I know that God will never give me more than I can handle,I just wish He didn't trust me so much." I believe that is the same feeling for both an intimate relationship with God and with someone mortal that one loves. There is joy unspeakable, also great pain and hardship on the seas of relationships.
The second is:
"The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."

I was on my own in a city of millions years before I became an adult. Being very shy and an interior person I mainly went to my job each morning, came home each evening and was completely alone. Having spent all my school years but three with the same two girls as best friends and now having no family, this was devestating.
I managed finally to put myself out there, to smile at people, listen carefully and before I knew it I had many friends. But I never forgot the pain of such emotional poverty and each day I look for a way to share my love with someone that I either know doesn't have any from others, or take a chance to smile and be kind to strangers and those I talk to at the shops, etc. This Christmas I gave gifts to strangers as I felt in my heart and was overwhelmed at how some of them opened up with great emotion and I saw they in fact, though looking put together and happy, were broken and alone. It shook me up.

[mukta581]

Call me wrong, call me right.
but i bring my better angels to every fight.
you may not like where i'm going,
but you sure know where i stand.
love me if you can

[xlxlauraxlx]

i dont remember it fully but when captain jack says

Me, i'm dishonest , & a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you want to watch out for because you...

i forget

...can never trust an honest man to be honest

lol
its not my favourite but it makes me chuckle

[Tosca]

Jane Jane, I love your signature! "The Lady of Shalott" is amazing! One of my favourites!

As for my favourite quotes...they are all in my signature!

[mazHur]

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." ~Timothy Leary

[mukta581]

I'm sorry for the rude words,,,i am truly am,,but everyone has their limits,,,but break a big promise to me twice,,,,

I prepared everything and just one text, sorry i could not make it,,,,that's it?

[Tuninks]

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never met an automatic weapon.
-General MacArthur.

It is in the darkest of times that heroes are born, every generation has one, you just need to figure out what kind of hero is he?
-Unknown

[Mortis Anarchy]

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." ~Timothy Leary

Haha, Love it!!!

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transitions thats troublesome."
-Isaac Asimov

"You mice, that ate the crumbs of my freedom, lo!" Charles Reznikoff, Epitaphs,2

[Bethany_Argyros]

I will not tiptoe through life, only to arrive safely at death
-- author unknown

If you want success you better get comfortable with rejection. The most successful people in life are also the world's most biggest failures.
-- Clint Borgen, Geneva Nights

Consider the successes that resulted from tired, discouraged people who decided to give it just one more try.
-- Life Little Instructions calender Volume X, March 14th 2006

[mazHur]

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concerns, poetry reminds him of the diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses (John. F. Kennedy, US president).

[edsbar101]

"When I read about the hazards of drinking, I gave up reading."--Youngman

[mukta581]

My life will became full of gloom without you
I self destruct every relationship for you
If u will leave me you will destruct my life!!!!!
(written by me)

[Joan Dillinger]

Gilda: Got a light?
Uncle Pio: Yes, Mrs. Mundson. It is so crowded here and yet so lonely.
Gilda: How did you know?
Uncle Pio: You smoke too much. I noticed only frustrated people smoke too much and only the lonely people are frustrated.

- Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth

[PaisteN'Pearl]

"And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of."
-W. Shakespeare

[PaisteN'Pearl]

"When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind oppresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress."

[PaisteN'Pearl]

"Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none."

[PaisteN'Pearl]

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form."
-Albert Einstein

[PaisteN'Pearl]

just a few but i believe it enough for now. I'll leave yall be for a bit. lol

[penguin10]

"life is made of ever so many greetings and partings" charles dickens

"the boy is ignorance and the girl is want. beware them both, but of the two beware the boy" charles dickens

"I don't think i'm surrounded my idiots. i think lightning is improperly distributed" Mark Twain

[Ydfkdy]

I have a rock garden,last week three of them died.

[intoxicatedsoul]

I exist as I am, that is enough. If no other in the world be aware I sit content. And if each and all be aware I sit content.
- Walt Whitman

[mukta581]

Love is strong yet delicate.
It can be broken.
To truly love is to understand this.
To be in love is to respect this.

[islandclimber]

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability

oscar wilde

[Etienne]

"We pass we pass since all must pass
Often I'll be returning."
-Apollinaire

This translation catches the beautiful sound and poetry of the French original, but I'm posting a more direct translation just for the little changes in meaning (nothing too serious, although there is a difference), if anyone is interested:
"Let's pass let's pass since all passes
Often I will turn around."

Another one:
"...but the small children will laugh at you!" -Diderot (pretty funny expression he used -his own character in Rameau's nephew - to tell someone he was ridiculous)

"... and I, seeing them, put my hands on my ribs, and burst in laughter; because the mad and the fool make fun of one another." -Diderot (same book, Rameau's nephew tells of an embarrassing circumstance where everyone around started laughing at him)

"The death of dogma is the birth of morality." - Kant

[jon1jt]

"We all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists. But all I neeed is sleep, a constructive attitude, and a little good luck." ---Sylvia Plath

[babyface123]

My fav qoute is " c'mon now, c'mon, you aint' serious?"

[Cutiepiecasey]

either my signature, or this;

we let you go,
with gifts of plectrums for your journey,
and melodies to help you on your way,

on and on, although you're gone,
candles burn without a flame on,
our final call to you, i know you're listening;
how could you leave us that way?

- - Bullet For My Valentine. :]
if you can't tell, they're my favorite band.
this song is very sad, though. but very good. [only recommended to metal lovers.]

[Scheherazade]

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44483000/gif/_44483347_raleigh.gif

[mazHur]

True !

[Scheherazade]

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44491000/gif/_44491823_caine_quote.gif

[JaneB]

my fav is "Well behaved women seldom make history."
by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

[DeathAngel]

“See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.”
-Robin Williams

[kelby_lake]

'I think it is all a matter of love- the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes'
Vladimir Nabokov

[RKOTeddysan]

To be or no to be that is the question..

William shakespeare

Oh my Romeo, Why thou for Romeo....

[sprinks]

"Pay attention not only to the cultivation of knowledge but to the cultivation of qualities of the heart, so that at the end of education, not only will you be knowledgeable, but also you will be a warm-hearted and compassionate person."
- Dalai Lama

[bounty]

not my favorite overall but one from one of my favorite books, watership down, that came to mind when i saw the thread: "All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you..."

[Mariami]

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun. ~ Al Capone :D

Seriously thought: The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived. ~ Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), A Woman of No Importance, Act 3

[Melmoth]

"Do not mistake genius for lack of talent"
"Better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you are not"

I forgot who said them but I know they were used by a band called Type O Negative in the back covers of a couple of their CD's...

[djy78usa]

"If I were married to you, I'd drink it" - Winston Churchill's alleged response to Lady Astor's suggestion that, if they were married, she'd put poison in his coffee.

[Etienne]

"If I were married to you, I'd drink it" - Winston Churchill's alleged response to Lady Astor's suggestion that, if they were married, she'd put poison in his coffee.

:lol: That's funny. Churchill was a great man.

[naomi moon]

"J'ai toujours pensait que tu me tuerais. La premiée fois que je t'ai vu, je venais de rencontrer un prétre à la porte de ma maison. Et cette nuit, En sortant de Cordoue, n'as tu rien vu? Un liévre a passé entre les pieds de ton cheval. C'est écrit." Carmen by Prosper Mérimée.
It was said by Carmen to Don José.
"...je suis las de tuer tout tes amants, c'est toi que je tuerai." Carmen by Prosper mérimée.
Don josé was tired of his life and was trying to convince Carmen to go away with him but she wouldn't because she was interested in another guy: Lucas.

[relgart]

Since I don't ever recall who may have said it...

'He died penniless. Right on schedule, hell of a budget.'

I have just always found that amusing.

[black butterffl]

i liked this one from Barbara Cartland's book:
"ce que j'ais, je le garde" = i keep what i have

[blp]

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker
And, in short, I was afraid

TS Eliot

[Nyu001]

"Persistence! Persistence is deciding to either achieve your goal, or die trying!". -Author: Unknown at the moment (I don't remember his name). If any one know this quote please do tell the author name. :)

“Knowing that we don’t know it’s humble; thinking that we know what we don’t know, is sickness”. -Lao-Tse.

Wisdom and Love must balance mutually. Wisdom without Love it’s a destructive element. Love without Wisdom can leads us to error: “LOVE IS LAW, BUT CONSCIOUS LOVE”. -Samael Aun Weor

“The greatest wisdom is to get to know oneself”. Galileo Galilei.

[Anza]

Amazing poem, blp.
~~~~~~~~~~
A good additude may not solve everything, but it will piss off enough people to make it worth your while.

[kelby_lake]

He kept babbling, "Help me." Me help him? How does one drowning man...help another drowning man?

[armenian]

"be the change you want to see in the world"
- gandhi

[Seant018]

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
--Mark Twain

A quote appropriate for these forums if I do say so myself :)

[MissWilbourne]

" Between grief and nothing, I will take grief"

-William Faulkner

" I don't know who invented high heels, but women owe him a lot"

-Marilyn Monroe

[AsILay]

ahh there are so manny i like

"The past is a reality that exists just beyond our reach"
--??
"Fasion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months
-- oscar wilde
"be kind to unkind people they probably need it the most"
--Ashleigh brilliant
"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand"
--??
"Religion is the opium of the masses"
--Karl marx
"Relality bites with a variety of sizes of teeth"
--Tony follari
"Time passes by bur persistant demons still clutch on to me"
--??
"there is no right or wrong just seperate beliefs and oppinions"
-- i thought that one up when i was arguing with my freshman geography teacher on the first day of highschool... it was a horrable way to start lol.

[caesar]

ahh there are so manny i like

"there is no right or wrong just seperate beliefs and oppinions"
-- i thought that one up when i was arguing with my freshman geography teacher on the first day of highschool... it was a horrable way to start lol.

This reminded me. I once thought this up, "There is no right and wrong outside the society."

[PersonalPenguin]

I love this thread people, I could surf it all day...

Here's a few of my favs:

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

According to my calculations, the problem doesn’t exist.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. - Shakespeare

Of course it’s all in your head, Harry, but why should that mean it isn’t real?
~ Albus Dumbledore

PP

[ramblinman]

Love witnessing sexy

[jaywalker]

Henry Fonda in ''The Rounders''.
''Needs a hard man to eat boiled Owl.''
I wonder what it means.

[jaywalker]

''If only God were alive to see this.'' Homer Simpson.

[jaywalker]

''I colllect sea-shells.
I keep 'em on beaches all around the World.''

[ramblinman]

"God gave me two feet. That's why I take one step at a time"--Glen Campbell in "True Grit"

[ramblinman]

"Curiosity salted the snail"--Spongebob

[jonathan467]

"there is no there there" - Gertrude Stein

[Logos]

"You can say anything you want, yes sir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend. ... I bow to them. ... I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite them, I melt them. ... I love words so much. Everything exists in words."

--from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's Memoirs.

[Nightshade]

"You can say anything you want, yes sir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend. ... I bow to them. ... I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite them, I melt them. ... I love words so much. Everything exists in words."

--from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's Memoirs.

I like that :nod: Ill have to add that one to my door art.

[quasimodo1]

"To study music we must learn the rules.
To create music, we must forget them."
--Nadia Boulanger

[Mr. Vandemar]

"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist.”

- Dom Helder Camara

I especially like this quote because of its simplicity and deep meaning (through analysis). I imagine "they" to be those in power or those with money (the capitalists). "They" do not mind short term and immediate donation, because it does not affect them and by congratulating him they imagine themselves as humanitarians. "They" do, however, mind his suggestion of social reformation because of its results in their power and material possessions. "They" brand him as the unmentionable "commie" and make the listener assume the negative connotations (Soviet, evil, terrorist, whatever) of "commie" while ignoring the positive.

[caddy_caddy]

You have sinned like a man, do not persevere on it like a devil-- Christopher Marlowe

This sentence changed my life; I've never read sth more touching.

[dogar sahab]

"Crying is the refuge of plain women not the pretty ones"
Bernard Shaw(I guess in his play CANDIDA)
Bush senior commented on Clinton-Lewinsky affair:
"God has given man both brain and penis but not enough blood to run both of them at the same time"

[qimissung]

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I love these quotes, maybe above all others. My initial training was in journalism, and the ability to ask pertinent, pointed, interesting questions is the foundation to any story one would then write; now I'm a teacher, and I think that all learning stems from the questions we ask ourselves. And besides, I am always curious.

As to the second one, to survive, we must face the unthinkable sometimes...and well, you get the rest.

[Logos]

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."--from John Donne's Meditation XVII (http://www.online-literature.com/donne/409/) (which inspired Ernest Hemingway's novel title For Whom The Bell Tolls)

--

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.--from Donne's The Sun Rising (http://www.online-literature.com/donne/342/)

--

[lugdunum]

Not my favorites but I like these:
God is really only another artist, he made the elephant, giraffe and cat. He has no real style but keeps trying new ideas. - Pablo Picasso

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. - Antoine de Saint Exupery

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with sniffles predominating. - O. Henry

[carino]

These are two quotes I like:

"Man is the only creature on earth that will shorten its life by working hard to acquire things that will further shorten its life." Unknown author

"Life is to important to take seriously"--Unknown author

[djy78usa]

I recently read a transcript of the last speech Kurt Vonnegut wrote before his death. The speech is included in Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of some of Vonnegut's posthumously published writings. My favorite quote from the speech is Vonnegut's advice to writers just starting out:


Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college.

[Scheherazade]

"Lower your head forward until your chin touches your chest momentarily and then raise your head to an upright position" - A memo to crew of the Royal Yacht Britannia instructs them in how to nod to members of the Royal Family.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/quote_of_the_day/

[Leabhar]

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson

[dramasnot6]

"Man is the only creature on earth that will shorten its life by working hard to acquire things that will further shorten its life." Unknown author



:lol: Scary but true.

[Guinivere]

Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a "war on terrorism". You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary? Terry Jones, former Python

I think this one is quite good, funny at least.

[Nightshade]

“Read in order to live.”
- Gustave Flaubert

“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.”
- A C Grayling, Financial Times (in a review of A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel)
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
- W. Fusselman
Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.”
- Voltaire
“So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall.”
- Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
“I was born with a reading list I will never finish.”
- Maud Casey
“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
- Logan Pearsall Smith
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
- Joseph Brodsky
“Some people will lie, cheat, steal and back-stab to get ahead... and to think, all they have to do is READ.”
- Fortune
“If you can read this, thank a teacher.”
- Anonymous teacher

:D

[TuckyTulip]

"Wisdom Is Love" ~ The Bible
Once one knows enough valuable facts about History,
It allows One to Enjoy the time we have , easier
to contend with...:nod:

[dramasnot6]

“
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
- Joseph Brodsky


:D

I should think the two go together in many cases.

[kelby_lake]

I regret not the things I've done but those I did not do.
-I forget, if anyone knows, tell me
.


mark twain?

'I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes'- Vladimir Nabokov

[lucidnightmares]

...because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember as certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 and 5 times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless...



i originally heard this from Brandon Lee in an interview but i think it`s from a book called The Sheltering Sky.

[qimissung]

That's quite thought-provoking.

[Xoote]

Are you serious?

It should speak for its self

[Scheherazade]

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44849000/gif/_44849099_advicetopoles.gif

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/default.stm

[Nightshade]

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44849000/gif/_44849099_advicetopoles.gif

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/default.stm

And the trully horrifying thing is its really really true! :lol:

[Guinivere]

It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything. ~ G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until a drop of blood forms on your forehead. ~ Douglas Adams

[Sunflower]

Well-behaved women seldom make history!

[aBIGsheep]

Its my signature, but I love this quote from an amazing martial artist. I don't know it word for word but it goes something along the lines of...
"The Past and future are only illusions. They only exist in the present."

I write it EVERYWHERE.

[djy78usa]

"We're not the only ones who destroy trees. What about beavers? You call yourself an environmentalist? Why don't you go out and club some beavers?"

-Lindsay Bluth from Arrested Development

This is probably my favorite quote from my favorite TV show

[DDE]

Well-behaved women seldom make history! Well said!!! I like your sig line too! :D

My fav quotes:

* Everything in life is down to two things: a) your mindset and attitude and, b) skills. ~~ unknown

* Always do right -- this will gratify some and astonish the rest. ~~ Mark Twain

* "If you want to find out what is behind these cold eyes, you will just have to claw your way through the disguise." ~~ Pink Floyd

* Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. ~~ Seneca

[Emil Miller]

Ich beschloss aber Politiker zu werden.

Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf


....l’indécent galimatias judiciaire, honte d'une nation civilisée...

Henry de Montherlant
Les célibataires

[qimissung]

This is probably my favorite quote from my favorite TV show

Great show, eh? One of my favorites, too. It is brilliant!!!!!

[Emil Miller]

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." ~Timothy Leary

''Women are definitely lacking in intelligence. If you want proof, you should
look at some of the men they get married to.''

[ex ponto]

''Hur-rah!!!'' (George from ''The Black Adder'')

A joke

[clumsy angelle]

I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.
-Philippians 4:13

-this quote enabled me to battle my pride and weaknesses... it inspired me to have more faith in myself and improve in some ways...

[Miss March]

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Einstein himself said:

"No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"

He was an interesting man, old Albert.



Well-behaved women seldom make history!

- I like this Sunflower :)

[Sunflower]

[QUOTE=Miss March;608502]"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Einstein himself said:

"No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"

He was an interesting man, old Albert.



I like Einstein too,;)
Here are a few from him too.

• "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
• "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."

[Sunflower]

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until a drop of blood forms on your forehead. ~ Douglas Adams

Awesome!:thumbs_up

[atiguhya padma]

My favourite Einstein quote is this:

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
(Albert Einstein, in a recently discovered letter, reported in the Guardian)

I like this quote because the fundies and happy clappers continue to pedal Einstein as a believer, largely thanks to their inability to recognise metaphors. In fact, it is largely due to their plain ignorance of the power and use of metaphor that they are fundies and happy clappers in the first place.

[Alex.A]

Describing the disinclination of ancient philosophers to wrangle about religion, Gibbon writes: "It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume".

(A memorable rebuff, I think.)

[LitNetIsGreat]

Just about anything by Wilde.

"we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Just one that popped into my head that I like.

[sjeluna]

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face - Basil Hallward to Dorian Gray

[dramageek]

"If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog."
-Harry Truman

"Never leave the person you love for the person you like, because the person you like will leave you for the person they love."
-I'm not sure, but if anyone knows, please tell me.

"If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be. And if all else remained, and he were anihalated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."
-Cathie Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the decision that something else is more important than fear."
-Anonymous

[victoria1729]

The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.

I like the quote except that it is a contradiction.

I suppose, "The only absolute truth is that there are no OTHER absolute truths" might do. Then again, I exist; that qualifies as an absolute truth for me. And I suppose "You exist" qualifies as an absolute truth for you. &ct.
So we might have billions of absolute truths. Then again, you might not exist, so I am back to two. How about, "The only absolute truths are that I exist and there are no other absolute truths". This is getting out of hand, it is starting to sound like the 2nd commandment (or is it the first?); anyway it's one of them I haven't broken (yet).

I am going to stop here before I make an absolute fool of myself. Replying to 5 year old posts is dangerous stuff.

Ensign Vic

[Kaltrina]

"Everything happens for a reason"

because I strongly believe that everything that happens to us has a reason... I do not believe in coincidence... :)

[carino]

"Life is too important to be taken seriously"

"If you would lift me, you must be on higher ground"--Emerson

"He that pryeth into every cloud may be struck with a thunderbolt"--John Clarke

[hoope]

Here r quotes for Helen Keller , a person who was able to make us struggle hard for life..& know that , its sometimes by losing that we find ourselves.
I admire her greatly.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

[SecretUmbreon]

My favourite quote is:
"Always forgive your enemies:nothing annoys them so much"--Oscar Wilde:D

[tempered_sugar]

"To love ones self is the beginning of a lifelong romance"~Oscar Wilde
(Two in a row for the genius!)

[mukta581]

''If you want to be loved, be lovable.

''When love is not madness, it is not love.

[Muskaan]

We are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel!!


God made relatives, Thanks God we can choose our friends ;)



dont know who said that, If anyone knows let me know too :)

[Sin of Red]

"If we don't hang together, we shall assuredly all hang seperatley"
-Benjamin Franklin

[Sorceress]

"Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes"
-Charlotte Bronte [Jane Eyre]

[TheInsomniac]

Personal favroite ^_^

'You can't treat every situation as a life-and-death matter because you'll die a lot of times.'
- Van Wilder

[zolasdisciple]

I know qoutes are an important part of literature because they represent the bigger picture of the work. What is your favorite qoute? Mine is of course T.s.Eliots "Go,go said the bird,Human kind cannot bear very much reality". Yet Wilhem Meisters quote from goethe is equally beautiful. "all mens failings i forgive in actors,but no actors failings will i forgive in men"

[Midnight_Star]

My favorite Qout is from Eldest Murtagh said this after retreiving his fathers sword from Eragon.

"Thorn is my dragon and a thorn he shall be to all our enemies."

This qout you can also find on my Profile in My sig.

[Isaac]

My favorite quote is:

"Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." Martin Luther

Original:

"Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen."

[browneyedbailey]

My favorite quote? Only a dork would know.
"Fingers on lips!!!!"
~The Doctor.

[Cellar Door]

don't know who said it but i like it:

Men and women can not slake their thirst in the same way because they thirst for different things

and

"Who is man that is not angry?"
Timon of Athens


and

(really not a quote, but a piece of song)

Our dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall
from Ani DiFranco's Subdivision

[^^@n!t@^^]

hi, I'm a newcomer here)
I like the quote from book by Paolo Coelio "Alchemic" : "If you want something,the whole universe conspires in helping you to achieve it"

[maraki16]

'a lover with no indescretion is no lover at all'-thomas hardy. not my favourite quote, but certainly one that i really like

[Charger]

"I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind."

"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Hence, love, deserved respect, and forgiveness seem to be equally important to the freedom from the pressure to obey the rules just because they are commonly accepted."

Richard David Bach

[Sin of Red]

My favorite quote? Only a dork would know.
"Fingers on lips!!!!"
~The Doctor.

Hey now! Another one would be.
"Nice to meet you rose, now run like hell." Or some such thing.

[pegleg]

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, "Let Newton be", and all was light"

"Where Wigs with Wigs, with Sword-knots Sword-knots strive,
Beaus banish Beaus, and Coaches Coaches drive"

both by Pope, latter in Rape of the Lock.

I guess I like 'interesting' word combinations. Among my favorite writers are Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pope, and Edward Dalhberg.

Pegleg

[Hobbes]

In morality and art, it means drawing a line somewhere. O.Wilde
Good thread by the way.

[dodong]

my favorites:

"I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul"-William Ernest Henley
-:you are my enemy in the morning.
-:you are still my enemy at night..but even enemies can show respect.."like this too.heard it from Troy-the movie

[Emil Miller]

Two from the master:


Were I to be angered at the stupidity of humankind, I would spend the whole of my life in a state of chronic ire.

Love may make the world go round but it`s money that greases the axle.


W.S. Maugham

[Scheherazade]

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5360/45161590cambridgefw9.gif (http://imageshack.us)

[Virgil]

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

Cicero-55 B.C.

Does one even need to add anything to that? ;)

[Emil Miller]

Does one even need to add anything to that? ;)

Nope Virgil,

I couldn`t have put it better myself.

[kayj]

"Never regret anything that made you smile"

[quasimodo1]

Satan is a coping mechanism for monotheists. the History Channel

[Stray_of_Hyrule]

"Good cannot exist without evil."

I use this quote in every story I write. Everything has a good and evil side, without both it cannot exist. =^-^=

[librarius_qui]

"Saiba que os poetas, como os cegos, podem ver na escuridão."

(From a song, "Choro bandido", by Edu Lobo & Chico Buarque)
It means "know that poets, like blindmen, can see in the darkness".

It's followed me for a while, now ...


klicky
:crash:

[cow_trix]

"A closed mind is just like a closed book. Just a lump of wood."

[burmesedays]

'Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
Lord Acton

[polgara]

"This above all, - to thine own self be true;
And it will follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Hamlet - Act 1 Scene 3

[crystalmoonshin]

"Good cannot exist without evil."

I use this quote in every story I write. Everything has a good and evil side, without both it cannot exist. =^-^=

Wow, that's very Asian. Pretty much like yin and yang.

As for my most unforgettable quote and something that I apply in life, it's Soren Kieerkegaard's "There are two ways to be fooled; one is believing what is not so, and the other is not believing what is so."

So I make it a point to believe in people (but of course with discretion and prudence). Never mind it if sometimes people lie to me, at least, it isn't m,e who commits the sin, though I do from time to time, too.

[Logos]

[one of the variations of this "quote (http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/niem.htm)"]

"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

--Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)


From: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/niemoeller.html

--

[prendrelemick]

The truth will set you free.

[Genevieve428]

My favorite quote is by Flannery O'Connor
She said "Anyone who survived childhood should have enough material to write about for the rest of their life."
I love it because it helps me keep trying to write.

[cipherdecoy]

It's not my favourite but one of my favourites:
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
-George Bernard Shaw

[Leaver]

"The hardest battle in life is to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else."
e.e. cummings

"Each man has only one genuine vocation-to find the way to himself"
Demian, Hesse

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored
Aldous Huxley

the civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet
~ralph waldo emerson

[weltanschauung]

aham eva param brahman

[Sus001]

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
Dr. Suess (1904-1991)

[Dr. Hill]

"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies." - Oscar Wilde

[Equality72521]

"If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake—there it is. That’s the straw, you see. And my straw reaches acrooooooossssss the room … I … drink … your milkshake. I drink it up!" -Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

[impofidres]

"What power would hell have if those imprisoned there could not dream of heaven?" ~Morpheus~ (Neil Gaiman's Sandman)

[mom63423]

I'm glad you quoted an Italian writer!
Here's my favourite quote:"He jests at scars that never felt a wuond" (W. Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet)

[Janine]

I'm glad you quoted an Italian writer!
Here's my favourite quote:"He jests at scars that never felt a wuond" (W. Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet)

Welcome to the forum, mom63423, I love this quote and not sure I had recalled it or noticed it before, and I have seen the play performed so often and read it years back.

Many of the members like Italian authors. We discussed one not long ago:

"The Name of the Rose", a novel by Umberto Eco, is a historical whodunnit — a murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327. It is an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. First published in Italian in 1980 under the title Il nome della rosa, it appeared in 1983 in an English translation by William Weaver.

This is from Wikipedia. You may have heard of it or even read it or the author. It was quite good.

[amr_i_m]

Freedom is not to wait for anything "translated from an Arabic writer Ahlam Mostghanmy"

It is such a big world, something is always happening somewhere. from for one more day by Mitch Albom

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even in a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime. from The kite runner by Khalid el houssiny

What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly. Carl Rogers

“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.” -Voltaire

"Happiness keeps u Sweet, Trials keep u Strong, Sorrow keeps u Human, Failure Keeps u Humble, Success keeps u Glowing, but only God Keeps u going."

[Kawthar K.]

" I think they named the orange before the carrot"--Demetri Martin

[xlxlauraxlx]

1. "Be not afraid of greatness, some are born with greatness, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." -William Shakespeare


I love this quote too - it was in One Tree Hill once and I just think its good and it has lots of gusto lol. If that makes sense.

[aBIGsheep]

Look at my signature. Made me choke.

[xlxlauraxlx]

Yeah thats pretty sad, as is;

“Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate”

[omkamy]

"for love that time was not as love is nowadays"
Malory
"when suffering knoks at your door and you say there is no seat for him,he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool"
Achebe
"only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and i'n not shure about the the former"
Einshtein

[LitNetIsGreat]

Anything by Oscar Wilde. There needs to be no explanation as to why.

[djy78usa]

Two from the genius mind of Jack Handy:

- I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate.
And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

- If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them.

[Pewnut]

I really like the following quote from Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality 'cause it appeals to my anarchist nature:

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and
found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of
civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors
and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the
stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to
this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth
belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

[pjloki]

I exist as I am,that is enough,if no other in the world be aware I sit content, and if each and all be aware I sit content. Walt Whitman "Leaves of Grass"

[Lust Hogg]

John J. Rambo: "You know what you are. What you're made of. War is in your blood. Don't fight it. You didn't kill for your country. You killed for yourself. God's never gonna make that go away. When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing."
Certainly not my favorite quote, but absolutely hilarious.

[conartist]

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time...

Macbeth after being told of his wife's death. I don't know that it's my absolute favourite quote, but it's stuck with me more than anything else by Shakespeare or any other writer.

[conartist]

"If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake—there it is. That’s the straw, you see. And my straw reaches acrooooooossssss the room … I … drink … your milkshake. I drink it up!" -Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

That is a great film, and that's probably the peak of it. Day-Lewis is an unbelievable actor.

[AshleyEliz]

It may be cliche, but I love, and always have loved the Slaughterhouse-Five gravestone engraving "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

Vonnegut is a genius.

[jon1jt]

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed. ~ William Penn

[Pewnut]

I hereby rescind my previous post and replace it with this little gem:

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
— Emma Goldman

[billyjack]

John J. Rambo: "You know what you are. What you're made of. War is in your blood. Don't fight it. You didn't kill for your country. You killed for yourself. God's never gonna make that go away. When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing."
Certainly not my favorite quote, but absolutely hilarious.

saw it 4 times. love it

"who are you!" --john j to some missionary fella. a just question i felt

[aBIGsheep]

Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.
-Chuck Klosterman

I love his analysis of mainstream media.

[kandaurov]

Right now? 'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better' (Beckett).

Also, for those of you out there from Portugal: 'e uma vontade de rir | nasce do fundo do ser' (Xutos e Pontapés).

[OhReally?]

^ Those are some really good ones! Here's mine:
'That was one of the best Pizzas I have ever eaten in my life. The cheese was so good it made me faint' - Elvis.
....I don't know. It reminds me to relax and enjoy myself once in a while :)

[la rose]

It's not shame when you fail but it's shame when you fail without trying.

[hoope]

I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die

for LEONARDO DA VINCI

[Emil Miller]

I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die

for LEONARDO DA VINCI

Hoope,

I do not know much, other than the usual things, about Leonardo da Vinci but, if he said that, he is a greater man than I thought he was.

[Bebbin]

Brian Bean, just so you know, I love your icon. W. Somerset Maugham is my absolute favorite author. :)

Anyway, here's a quote I love by Tom Stoppard: "'It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them."

[kevinthediltz]

"I have sinned, in that I signed with my hand what I did not believe with my heart. When the flames are lit, this hand shall be the first to burn."

Thomas Cranmer while being burned at the stake. When the fire was lit, he leaned forward and held his hand in the flame and said nothing else.

Powerful, beautiful. I just love it.

[hoope]

Hoope,

I do not know much, other than the usual things, about Leonardo da Vinci but, if he said that, he is a greater man than I thought he was.

thx Brain , i also found it by mistake while reading about him .:)

[Emil Miller]

Brian Bean, just so you know, I love your icon. W. Somerset Maugham is my absolute favorite author. :)

Anyway, here's a quote I love by Tom Stoppard: "'It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them."

Well I am pleased to see another Maugham fan on the forum,they seem to be an endangered species on this particular website. Apart from Of Human Bondage which, admittedly, is his best novel, he seldom gets a mention, despite having written such wonderful works as The Razors Edge and The Moon and Sixpence; not to mention some of the best short stories ever written. Considering his wonderful ability to tell a story without wallowing in turgid intellectuality, and his perfectly believable plots and varied characters, it is a mystery why so little mention is made of him.

[LiteratureGeekk]

My favorite quote is "as God is my witness, I shall never be hungry again". I love it because it shows that all people have remorse and troubles, not just the not-so-fortunate. (Gone With The Wind).

[The Comedian]

My favorite quotation?

"None is so poor that he needs sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness."

~Henry Thoreau, Walden

I like this passage because every time in think about Thoreau trying to save a dime by sitting on a rotting old pumpkin instead of, say, a chair, I do this: :lol:

[theoryofsilence]

here are some quotes.. i have not looked at everything but you all seem to be serious.. tis not bad but youall need some laughter in life.. i can be seruious at times but i choose to be silly an goof off.. i have a few quotes if not many... so here they are..

"im not laughing at you.. im laughing with you"- never knew where it came from

"life is just a chance to grow a soul"- a. powell davis

"because i have loved life.. i shall have no sorrow to die"- amelia burr

those are three off the top of my head but i will post some more later if i find time.. give comments if you like.. i have a many more but most of them silly an high school..

[elinzme]

well the best one I can think of right now off the top of my head is:

"You never really understand a person until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." - Atticus Finch, from To Kill A Mockingbird

I was pretty young when I read it and it kinda stuck with me till today.. it's a great way to put things into perspective!

[quasimodo1]

"Suspense on the quicksands of ambivalence is our life's whole nemisis" Sylvia Plath

[rtc143]

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. josh billings

&

The ones we deam crazy are just in a state of always dreaming. At least they'll never lose grasp of their's. ryan carroll

[Niamh]

It is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all...
Tennyson.

[bsncsasd]

Is not general incivility the very essence of love?

Who can name that one... it's one of my favorites... only in its own context, of course.

[bsncsasd]

"The reasonable man adapts to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress is dependent upon the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

They call me the Unreasonable Man at work... even though I'm a woman.

[Don Quixote Jr]

Whats your fav quote?

I normally like short quotes, but the one below is my new favorite:

"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
And then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant minister in Nazi Germany, in 1945; from "Political Quotations", Daniel B. Baker, ed.

[kelby_lake]

'I am half sick of shadows' (pretty sure that's the last line of The Lady of Shallot)

[Moshu]

My all-time fave quote is from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte:
"I've dreampt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind."

[Lokasenna]

One of my favourites is from Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia:

"Moi, je serai autocrate: c'est mon metier. Et le bon Dieu me pardonnnera: c'est son metier"

This roughly translates to:

"I shall be an autocrat: that is my job. And the good Lord will forgive me: that's his."

Basically my philosophy is life...:rolleyes:

[kruttikam]

Some of my favs are...

Speak softly and carry a big stick.
-Roosevelt I think

I regret not the things I've done but those I did not do.
-I forget, if anyone knows, tell me

I may disagree with what you have to say but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it.
-Voltaire

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed that he has grown so great?
-Shakespeare

The whole world sees me as just one person, I want just one person to see me as the whole world.
-I made this up. It was based on someone's signature link though, I just changed it so it sounded better. No idea where its from originally.



"Better is a dinnerof herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."
-Solomon

"The world is a comedy,to those who think; a tragedy to those who feel."
-Horace Walpole

[a_little_wisp]

Sorry, long list (I simply cannot pick just one)... None of these will get me far in life, LOL, but I truly love them, and return to them when I'm feeling a little lost in life. I've collected them throughout my life thus far, and these are some of the ones that have stuck with me most (I do have more, of course). Most of them are about stories, some of them make me smile, others, thoughtful, and... I suspect all of them reflect little pieces of myself.

"In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of "faery lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"I'M SIGNIFICANT,'
...screamed the dust speck." - Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”

"I think... that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt."

-Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things


"It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron, tree and grass, house and fire; bread and wine."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories (essay)

"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost."
- J.R.R Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories (essay)

"'What do you fear, lady?'" he asked.
"'A cage,'" she said. "'To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.'"
- Eowyn/ J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

“Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the Fox from The Little Prince


"There has never been a world in which I was not known."

"I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."

-Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn.

[IndigoStorm]

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

[Moshu]

"Outside of a dog a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's to dark to read."

[IndigoStorm]

A .45 beats a Royal Flush every time!

[ntropyincarnate]

"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws." ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate." ~ Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

[beroq]

My top ten quotes includes one from Barack Obama, which is:

"My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success."

[angeldance5]

curiousity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect

blank verse is like a tennis match with no net, freer

[AuntShecky]

If you "Google" the quotation "Either that wallpaper goes or I do," you find scores of links attributing it to Oscar Wilde. Nevertheless, Robert Byrne's 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (Fawcett, 1988), states on p. 250: that the quotation is "Almost certainly not the last words of Oscar Wilde." (Boldface mine.)

But I do believe that these were the last words of Ronald Firbank, the flamboyant British novelist. Does anyone know the correct speaker for sure? You really can't trust the Web for absolute accuracy. For instance, an article about poetry on Slate a few months ago misattributed a line to Ezra Pound when it in fact had been written by Auden. Also the Wikipedia entry for Saul Bellow has his date of birth a full month early.

[Midnight_Star]

One of my favorite quotes is from Ceaser,
"Veni, vidi, vici!" -"I came, I saw, I conquared!"
It has such a powerful meaning towards it.
"I Came," Is just beautiful to me.
"I saw," Is the lead up to...
"I Conquared!" The powerfulness to the whole saying.
And the Quote from Eldest, "Thorn is my dragon and a thorn he shall be to all our enemies." Just Rocks!

[rima]

There is a nice task to make a choice of numerous quotations.It happens to have on my desk a book by Italian Author Francesco Guicciardini XV century.The most precious attribute of him was brilliant mind.

"The revenge doesn't come from hate or bad nature each time,then sometimes there is e need of that in order to be an example, by which others to be learned not to offend anyone.It is all right for a man to get revenge on one by not cherishing hate against that person"

"Indeed,people to whom the same opportunity has been given by the second time are really happy.For the first time man possibly missis it or makes bad use of that as much as wise to be;but, who doesn't understand it and is not able to take advantage of it by second time,that one is very unreasonable."

"People gifted by Spirit to be above the average have that gift to be suffering and calamity of their,for of that,they have nothing more but pain and efforts that are unknown of ordinary people"

It is translation from a book written by Ivo Andric Serbian author and awarded Nobel prize, who translated it from Italian.
Feel free to make some corrections /if it allowed /in my translation to English.

[optimisticnad]

There is a nice task to make a choice of numerous quotations.It happens to have on my desk a book by Italian Author Francesco Guicciardini XV century.The most precious attribute of him was brilliant mind.

"The revenge doesn't come from hate or bad nature each time,then sometimes there is e need of that in order to be an example, by which others to be learned not to offend anyone.It is all right for a man to get revenge on one by not cherishing hate against that person"

"Indeed,people to whom the same opportunity has been given by the second time are really happy.For the first time man possibly missis it or makes bad use of that as much as wise to be;but, who doesn't understand it and is not able to take advantage of it by second time,that one is very unreasonable."

"People gifted by Spirit to be above the average have that gift to be suffering and calamity of their,for of that,they have nothing more but pain and efforts that are unknown of ordinary people"

It is translation from a book written by Ivo Andric Serbian author and awarded Nobel prize, who translated it from Italian.
Feel free to make some corrections /if it allowed /in my translation to English.

Sorry not relevant to this thread but - :eek: - rima you've stolen my nickname! :lol::lol:

[rima]

Sorry not relevant to this thread but - :eek: - rima you've stolen my nickname! :lol::lol:
O.K.Thought this Author is more than respected to be quoted here;his mind is brilliant and saying beautiful, and maybe not widely enough recognized.And yes,it is from a book compiled by Serbian Nobel awarded prize Author Ivo Andric.
Quotations are partly a literature feature.
If you like one of my, favorite is

"What you meet in your dreams you can achieve in reality,for in the reality is everything possible."

"All my life i have been trying to live up to my good intentions,which are my real and genuine inside being;but i met wrong answers."

[billl]

rima, I don't know why optimisticnad said those quotes weren't relevant to the thread. Maybe optimisticnad thought they were your OWN quotes (that you created yourself)...? They were pretty difficult to understand, though. I imagine they're pretty difficult to translate.

I think the two quotes in your second post are good ones, (and easier to understand)!

[billl]

The quote that I always think of first for lists like these is from Yogi Berra. He was talking about a restaurant or a nightclub or something:

"No one goes there anymore--it's too crowded."

''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''''
And another funny one by Mark Twain, describing a rival's book:

"Once I put it down, I couldn't pick it back up."

[rima]

rima, I don't know why optimisticnad said those quotes weren't relevant to the thread. Maybe optimisticnad thought they were your OWN quotes (that you created yourself)...? They were pretty difficult to understand, though. I imagine they're pretty difficult to translate.

I think the two quotes in your second post are good ones, (and easier to understand)!
You are right,i don't know why they are not relevant to the thread.They are written by Italian Author,i have no translation in English/needed to translate them myself/.I wanted you to meet this Author because i believe many don't know about him.Francesco Guicciardini XV century.It would be great,one day someone to find and read his sayings,and put English translation.Why not?Probably this forum is imagined to all members be active and innovative.
If you like the two last quotes i am glad for they are mine.

[Ohh]

Dance as though no one is watching you, love as though you have never been hurt before, sing as though no one can hear you, live as though heaven is on earth.
- Souza

[alexar]

"That part of ourself which we suppress in youth, for the achievement of some given ambition, will return many years later, knife in hand, determined to destroy its destroyer." - Carl Jung

Because I saw it come true so many times.


rima, I don't know why optimisticnad said those quotes weren't relevant to the thread.

I think that it was her own comments that she was saying weren't relevant. Well in truth I virtually know that.

I have a copy of 'The Bridge on the Drina' on my shelf, unread, as yet.

I thought Andric was a Bosnian Croat?

[AppY]

"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." Douglas Adams

[jocky]

The great actor and confirmed athiest W.C. Fields when caught thumbing through the bible on his deathbed pronounced '' I was looking for loopholes ''

[King Mob]

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Beckett always makes my skin crawl. In that quote he expresses the only consolation of living he found. Fail better, do it again, paradoxically win at something: at failure. "I can´t go on. I´ll go on." (from The Unnamable)

And this victory-through-failure is seen in a passage from John Barth´s Title (quite direct):

"Self-defeat implies a victor, and who do you suppose it is, if not blank? That's the only victory left. Right? Forward! Eyes open."

[Olga4real]

...Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, even without realizing what he's doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, 'My flower's up there somewhere...

Antoine de Saint Exupery

[bluosean]

For all we take we must pay, but the price is crule high. Rudyard Kipling

[Tuggernaut]

"Religion is the opiote of the people"

- Karl Marx

[libernaut]

opiates are the religion of the masses, aldous huxley

[Mathor]

Mark Twain - "Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."

[Zee.]

This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?"

[FalseReality]

This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?"

Explosions in the Sky used that in a song. Great quote.

[weltanschauung]

solitary, solar, bristling with lashes, it gazed from the lunette of a guillotine. the drawing was named eternal recurrence, and its horrible machine was the cross-beam, gymnastic gallows, portico. coming from the horizon, the road to eternity passed through it. a parodic verse, heard in a sketch at the concert mayol, supplied the caption:

god, how the corpse's blood is sad in the depth of sound. (bataille <3)

[FanofdeBeauvoir]

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Simone de Beauvoir

[Lullaby]

"Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed.

He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled.

And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world."

- from Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk; because it is so true.

"Another thing is no matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close."

- from Invisible Monsters, also, by Chuck Palahniuk; because once again, it's true and this quotation just spoke to me.. I'm not entirely sure why.

"This is not an exit."

- from American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; this is my favourite BEE quote. It doesn't mean a lot out of context, but it's the last line of the novel and, in it's entirety, it pretty much summed up the whole concept of the novel.

And, finally...

"Disappear Here"

- from Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis; this novel changed my life and this quotation is the motif for it.

[yasser]

When there's a will there's a way
i like this one very much, it's the true meaning of what success is all about
thank you

[Like_Herod]

I've just spent ages reading through a good many pages of this thread and thought I'd add my own. It's one of the Shakespeare quotations Huxley uses in Brave New World:

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,
Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,
Writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure
The cygnet's down is harsh…

[DarkStormyNight]

Louis L'Amour's Education of a Wandering Man reads like a book of quotes. I got a lot of wisdom out of that book.

"I remember the decks of ships where I have walked, the feel of the wheel in my hands, the drip of water from yellow oilskins, and I have heard the crash of great trees coming down in the forest. One does not have to live among these things to remember them, and I do. They were and are a part of me."

"A writer is bound by no earthly ties; what he is and what he sees he creates in his mind, or his subconscious creates it for him. Thanks to the lands I have seen and the books I have read, I know what it was like. The world of which I write is my world always. It is a claim I have staked and continue to stake, and each writer has his own way of telling a story."

[Snowqueen]

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain."

Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray).

[Perkunos]

I always enjoyed this from Beowulf
“Unless he is already doomed Wyrd is apt to favour him who keeps his nerve”

and Anearin’s
“I wish I had been the first to shed my blood at Cattraeth, to pay for the blue mead and the feasting”

[Pryderi Agni]

Currently, it's The Glimmer Man's 'We gotta have sympathy for the dead, the dying, the could-be-dying and the soon-to-be-dead.'

[Scheherazade]

"It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green."

Japan's first lady-in-waiting on her trip to Venus

[Nimor]

One of my favourite is: "She was a phantom of delight/ when first she gleamed upon my sight" William Wordsworth

[repercussion]

Blessed are the idiots because they are the happiest people on the earth.

It's the subtitle of the novel "The White Shroud" by A. Skema, lithuanian writer.

[Philly501]

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
(JC Beckett)

This is one of my favourite quotes, mainly because I was studying Hamlet when I came across this.

[isidro]

But here is one.

"You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds."
Utopia, Sir Thomas More

[DarkPain]

I liked all of them, but mostly the last one because it is too hard to find that one.....

[Muha!!]

"everything comes to an end"
Have a nice day DarkPain

[soundofmusic]

The whole world sees me as just one person, I want just one person to see me as the whole world.
-I made this up. It was based on someone's signature link though, I just changed it so it sounded better. No idea where its from originally.

Wonderful sentiment. I always thought that is the one thing we all wait for in our lives; and hopefully, the feeling is mutual...
I saw it on an old link from 2007 named "It's all Greek to me" with several wonderful quotes:nod:




"Another thing is no matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close."

:eek2: :eek: :cold:

[QUOTE=Snowqueen;771459]"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain."

Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray).

:banana: One of my favorite authors, stories and quotes as well. I read a book with several of Benjamin Franklin's letters. There is one to a Ms. Brillion, In which he issued the same sentiment.

[caddy_caddy]

For every ill he has found its remedy save only death !( Sophocles, Antigone)

[Pollopicu]

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
-Marilyn Monroe


I love this quote because it describes me 100%.

[hoope]

-Marilyn Monroe


I love this quote because it describes me 100%.


its really a lovely quote.. :)

[hoope]

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Earl of Beaconsfield

[Nietzsche]

I can't pick a single quote. I will however paste several that I like.

"Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. " - Nikola Tesla


"I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger"- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The life of a man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." - Thomas Hobbes


"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." - Benjamin Franklin


"We can infer how blessed must be the life of a man whose will is silenced not for moments, as in the enjoyment of the beautiful, but for ever, indeed completely extinguished, except for the last glimmering spark that maintains the body." -- Arthur Schopenhauer [by will he is speaking of sexual desire]

"Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in" -- Arthur Schopenhauer

"How nicely the ***** sensuality knows how to beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied her!" - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"Faith: Not wanting to know what is true." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything." - George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. " - Aristotle