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Favorite Quotes

AbsoluteZero

AbsoluteZero

New Member
Quotes

What are some of your favorite quotes.

I would contribute but I havent read too many books, and even then it has been a while.
 
Oddly enough, I keep a "common place" book in which I often copy down quotes that particularly strike me. Many of them are too long to be included here; but, for starters:
"The way she produced words it wasn't exactly baby talk, but it gave you the feeling that in four seconds it would be."
Rex Stout - Prisoner's Base
or:
"I am not unacquainted with the dreadful, my memory is a faithful wife, and my imagination is . . . a diligent little maiden . . . "
Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
 
funes wrote:
Oddly enough, I keep a "common place" book in which I often copy down quotes that particularly strike me.
Click to expand...
Thats a good idea funes. If your memory is full of holes, like mine, a book like that might come in handy. Thanks!
 
I have a book in which I keep track of all the books I've read: ISBN, a resume, what I thought of it, etc. Sometimes I put some quotes in their as well... And that sometimes comes in handy when writing a paper... I used some stuff from The Unbearable Lightness of Being for a paper on the Prague Spring once... Made me feel smart ;)

I don't have the book with me now though. But I do know it had quite a few Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman quotes in it.
 
You mean like, "You're a jerk Dent. A complete kneebiter," thats one of my favorites.

Or, "So this is it then, we're going to die."

And who could forget, "..."

Douglas Adams got me through some rough times by making me laugh untill I forgot what the trouble was.
 
Quotes

I propose writing here your favourite quotes. Maxims, proverbs, extracts from books, verses of poems, anything you like, really.

Two for a good start:

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
J. R. R. Tolkien, LOTR

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Gandhi
 
Ah, now next to a good book, quotes are something I really enjoy. I put two of my favorites in my signature, other than that here are a few I like.
"When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me."-W. Somerset Maugham
"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age."-Jeanne Moreau
"Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow."-Jeff Valdez
"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."-unknown
"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."-Aesop
 
A few quotes I've saved over the years:

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning. "
- Catherine Aird

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than live up to them."
- Alfred Adler

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
- Aldous Huxley

"Only two things are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein

"Not all who wander are lost." - JRR Tolkien

"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."
- Muhammad Ali

And for Stephen King fans:
"Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to."
- from "Delores Claiborne"
 
Thanks for the quotes and the link. Many of them will definitely enrich my quotes collection.

Here are some more which I like:

'Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of travelling.'
Margaret Lee Runbeck

'What we see depends mainly on what we look for.'
J. Lubbock

'Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days, it will be.'
J. Schwartz

'Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.'
W. Sheakespeare

'The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.'
O. Wilde

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
Japanese Proverb
 
I'm a big fan of quotes that make me laugh, with a good pun, or some nice wordplay in it.

Here's one, from my current read 'Another Roadside Attraction' by Tom Robbins:

"Carelessness is a weakness that isn't tolerated in this order," he says in a voice that the average housewife would have to take out of the freezer at two in the afternoon if she wanted it thawed in time for supper.

Good stuff.

Cheers, Martin :D
 
Originally posted by Idun

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
Japanese Proverb
Click to expand...

Simple, yet profound. I like that one, I'll try to remember it when things are going wrong.

I like Oscar Wilde quotes, they always make me laugh. Two I can remember are:

"I can resist everything except temptation" and

"A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but chooses not to."

I don't think those are word perfect, but you can get the idea.

Stephen King also does a nice line in insults which are very quotable, but they're not suitable for here! I especially like the one which involves a doughnut, which regular readers of King might know! ;)
 
"Television will never be a serious competitor for radio because people must sit and keep their eyes glued to a screen: the average American family hasn't time for this."
The New York times, 1939

:D :D :D
 
"I know not what weapons world war Three will be fought with, but world war Four will be fought with sticks & stones." - Albert Einstein.

"It is much easier to get people to hate, when the object of their hatred does not look like them." - Michael Moore.


"Stupidity is it's own reward" - Don't know, but I use it all the time.

"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful" - Anton Szandor LaVey
 
"No one escapes from life alive!" --Michael Crighton, writing through a character in Congo

"I like being a pessimist: I'm either right or I'm pleasantly surprised" --can't remember

[Maybe insanity is just a minority of one.] --I can't remember the exact quote, but it is George Orwell speaking through a character in 1984
 
Its not a quote from a book but a prayer that I think about alot just now...

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..
Courage to change the things I can..
and wisdom to know the difference..
Click to expand...
 
Here are a couple of my favorites:

" A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life he cannot destroy fear: the fear, subtle, indestructible, and terrible, that pervades his being; that tinges his thoughts; that lurks in his heart; that watches on his lips the struggle of his last breath"
Joseph Conrad - "An Outpost of Progress"

"Once his father had said to him: 'It isn't the fact that you've got a few batty ideas that worries me, it's just that they are always the same batty ideas.' "
Bernardo Atxaga - Obabakoak
 
From Steven Eriksons Memories of Ice:
Itkovian to T'lan Imass (Erikson's take on the undead)
"We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it believing it must be earned. T'lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance."


And I love this one from A Song of Ice and Fire:
"Rheagar fought nobly,
Rheagar fought valiantly,
Rheagar fought honourably
and Rheagar died."
 
Gazing into the valley
He felt overcome with pain
As a man
Who has been in prison
Feels his chains
At his release from fear.
He spoke Enkidu's name aloud
As if explaining to the valley
Why he was there, wishing his friend
Could see the same horizon,
Share the same delights: My friend Enkidu
Died. We hunted together. We killed Humbaba
And the Bull of Heaven. We were always
At each other's side, encouraging when one
Was discouraged or afraid or didn't
Understand. He was this close to me.
He held his hands together to describe
The closeness. It seemed for a moment
He could almost touch his friend,

Could speak to him as if he were there:
Enkidu. Enkidu. But suddenly the silence
Was deeper than before
In a place where they had never been
Together.
He sat down on the ground and wept:
Enkidu. Enkidu.

As when we can recall so vividly
We almost touch,
Or think of all the gestures that we failed
To make.

After several minutes he stood up
Explaining only to himself why he
Had come--To find the secret of eternal life
To bring Enkidu back to life--
Recognizing now the valley was deaf
To loss known only to himself.

-From Gilgamesh.
 
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