SALAD BAR PHILOSOPHY
Topics: Mottos and Folk Wisom; Friendship; That Crazy Little Thing Called Love; Honour; Heroism & Bravery; War & Death; Truth, Lies & Perceptions of Reality; Government, Politics & Leadership; Religion & Morality; On the Nature of Good & Evil. (If I have not referenced the quote this means I am still researching the source.)
MOTTOS AND FOLK WISOM
Patience is slippery in a green hand.
There comes a time when you have to toss out the cat, lock up the door, put the key under the mat, and start off down the road. - Dragonlance: Time of the Twins
It is truly an ill wave that washes no good ashore.
Equity comes not to the sleepers but to those who are awake.
Rolling in muck is not the best way to keep clean.
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. - The Princess Bride
All things are ready, if our minds be so. - Henry V, Shakespeare
FRIENDSHIP
A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. - Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Debts are for strangers and merchants. - Savage Sword of Conan
Grant me from the blessed gods prosperity, and from all mankind the possession ever of good repute; and that I may thus be a delight to my friends, and an affliction to my foes, by the first revered, by the others beheld with dread. - Solon of Athens
The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship. - The Winter King
You may take away what you have given, and you may have me taken beyond the Shannon, or beyond the sea. You have even have my life, should you choose to have it, but against my friend I�ll not lift a spear. - Cuculain
THAT CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE
If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear the pain of loss, then our lives will be empty and our loss greater. - Dragonlance
Love affairs pall, you know. They�re only a way of exploring human nature if a strong attachment is lacking, which it mostly is. One looks for something, always hoping to find it. But then one day a realization dawns - that love affairs are more trouble than they�re worth, that the elusive something cannot be found this way. - Grass Crown, C. McCullough
Love is the only true adventure.
Love is merely a madness, and I tell you deserves as well a dark house and a whip as any madman. - Measure for Measure, Shakespeare
Love is not only or the beautiful.
�Do you understand this madness called love?� �I do understand that you can look into someone�s eyes and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.� - The Winter King
HONOUR
Honour is not in the weapon. It�s in the man. - Highlander 4: �End Game�
Every man has a monster inside of him. If a man is to live with honour he must confront the monster within - and then ask the question: the monster or the man? - Spectacular Spiderman
Those who have little need their honour.
If you sacrifice everything to win - all principles of right - you end up with a pretty hollow victory. - Day of the Starwind, D. Hill
Honour is what no man can give you and what no man can take away. - Rob Roy
HEROISM & BRAVERY
True heroics are to be carefully planned, and strenuously avoided. - B. Collyer
Oft is the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. - Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
To be the best you have to face the best. A true opponent will test your heart as well as your skill. - Babylon 5
Dreams do not come true by using caution, but only by braving danger.
You must be willing to face the greatest disasters and be determined never to sacrifice the glory that is yours. - Thucydides
�It�s better to live one hour as a tiger than to spend a whole lifetime as a worm.� �Yes, but whoever heard of a wormskin rug?� - Red Dwarf
WAR & DEATH
Hope alone doesn�t conquer a superior enemy.
The second rule of self-preservation was to shoot first and ask questions later. The first rule was to be somewhere else when the shooting starts.
Sometimes the appearance of strength can be as effective as strength itself. It might not matter whether you can beat an opponent if they believe you can.
Don�t rely on what�s comfortable. If you lose your weapon, you must grab what�s within reach. If you think you have no chance then surely you have none. Keep feelings out of it. If you taint your heart with fear or anger you�ll miss the moment. If a comrade dies you�ll do yourself no good by taking a needless risk. Feelings have no place in this world. - Savage Sword of Conan #184
Those who make civilisation possible are not necessarily fit to live in it.
The din of warfare drowns out the voice of the law. - Plutarch
TRUTH, LIES & PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY
Reality is what you bump into in the dark.
Looking at the future is like looking at a cake, until you taste it you don�t know, and then it�s too late. - Excalibur
If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so. - Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don�t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory. - Enter the Dragon
If life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion. And being thus, the illusion is real to me. - Queen of the Black Coast
In the darkness of the night you�ll cling to something that isn�t there; And when it�s absence is revealed by the sun�s first light, you�ll no longer care.
GOVERNMENT, POLITICS & LEADERSHIP
Effective socialisation reduces the need for formal laws and penalties. Authority is more stable when it is obeyed automatically than when penalties must be threatened or analysed. - F.I. Greenstein, Political Socialization in International Encycplodeia of the Social Sciences, vol. 14.
Children have to be tricked with dice, but men with oaths. - Lysander the Spartan
There is a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide these people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it. - Braveheart
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty. And we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think ourselves anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves. - A. Lincoln
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
RELIGION & MORALITY
These humans have besmirched everything He has bestowed upon them. They were given Paradise, they threw it away. They were given this planet, they destroyed it. They were favoured best among all His endeavours and some of them don�t even believe He exists. And in spite of it all He has shown them infinite fucking patience at every turn. - Dogma
If God did not exist would it be necessary to invent him?
Regret if you must, but don�t let it colour today or tomorrow. If you do the past will haunt you forever. You still have a long race to run. - Grass Crown, C. McCullough
It is so amusing to see mortals make gifts to the gods who have no need of them seeing as they shower them so liberally on mankind.
ON THE NATURE OF GOOD & EVIL
Some types of evil are not matters to broadcast far and wide, lest the unscrupulous or weak-minded take it into their heads to traffic with those forces and cause further chaos across the world. - Jonathan Nolan
When life is going well, and is enjoyable, and holds enough mental and physical challenge, coldness and cruelty can be buried for a while, however temporarily. - First Man in Rome, C. McCullough
For all the horrors that lurk at the bottom of a man�s soul, who�s to say what seeds of hope, of redemption lie beneath that? - Spectacular Spiderman
Do not enter with defeat in your heart, for that will be the first victory of evil.
In dark and loneliness they are strongest; they will not openly attack a house where there are lights and many people �. Their power is in terror. - Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth�s dark dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out their black lairs to newer and wider conquests. - At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
