Now comes the time when I get to torture you with my favorite things, especially quotations! Fun fun, no? :)
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Joan of Arc |
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And now, aged seventeen, she was made Commander-in-Chief, with a prince of the royal house and the veteran generals of France for subordinates; and at the head of the first army she had ever seen, she marched to Orleans, carried the commanding fortresses of the enemy by storm in three desperate assaults, and in ten days raised a siege which had defied the might of France for seven months. -Mark Twain, Saint Joan of Arc
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Joan of Arc, a mere child in
years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without
influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless
under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers
disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the
hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage
and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to
fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse, and
it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she turned
back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the English
power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE, which she
bears to this day.
(Mark Twain) Jean Francois Alden, introduction to Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc |
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"They are proud of you, dear. Yes, prouder than any village ever was of anybody before. And indeed it is right and rational; for it is the first time a village has ever had anybody like you to be proud of and call its own. And it is strange and beautiful how they try to give your name to every creature that has a sex that is convenient. ... They know how you love animals, and so they try to do you honor and show their love for you by naming all those creatures after you; insomuch that if a body should step out and call ''Joan of Arc--come!' 'there would be a landslide of cats and all such things, each supposing it was the one wanted..." -Mark Twain
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| Fantasy Excerpts | |
| "Jorin, why do the Atha'an Miere
call ships 'he'? Everyone else I've ever met calls them 'she.' I don't
suppose it makes any difference, but why?"
"The men will give you a different answer," the Windfinder said, smiling, "speaking of strength and grandness and the like as men will, but this is the truth. A ship is alive, and he is like a man, with a true man's heart." She rubbed the rail fondly, as if stroking something alive, something that could feel her caress. "Treat him well and care for him properly, and he will fight for you against the worst sea. He will fight to keep you alive even after the sea has long since given him his own deathstroke. Neglect him, though, ignore the small warnings he gives of danger, and he will drown you in a flat sea beneath a cloudless sky." -Robert Jordan
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"You fought us hard here."
Tormund turned his garron back toward the wildling camp. "You and your
brothers. I give you that. Two hundred dead, and a dozen giants. Mag
himself went in that gate o' yours and never did come out."
"He died on the sword of a brave man named Donal Noye." "Aye? Some great lord was he, this Donal Noye? One of your shiny knights in their steel smallclothes?" A blacksmith. He only had one arm." "A one-armed smith slew Mag the Mighty? Har! That must o' been a fight to see. Mance will make a song of it, see if he don't." -George R. R. Martin |
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Bashere shrugged, grinning behind his gray-streaked mustaches. "When I first slept in a saddle, Muad Cheade was Marshal-General. The man was as mad as a hare in spring thaw. Twice every day he searched his bodyservant for poison, and he drank nothing but vinegar and water, which he claimed was sovereign against the poison the fellow fed him, but he ate everything the man prepared for as long as I knew him. Once he had a grove of oaks chopped down because they were looking at him. And then insisted they be given decent funerals; he gave the oration. Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?
-Robert Jordan |
"Wait," Arya said
suddenly. "I have something else." She had stuffed it down inside her
smallclothes to keep it safe, so she had to dig deep to find it, while
the oarsmen laughed and the captain lingered with obvious impatience.
"One more silver will make no difference, child," he finally said.
"It's not silver." Her fingers closed on it. "It's iron. Here." She pressed it into his hand, the small black iron coin that Jaqen H'ghar had given her, so worn the man whose head it bore had no features. It's probably worthless, but... The captain turned it over and blinked at it, then looked at her again. "This... how?" Jaqen said to say the words too. Arya crossed her arms against her chest. "Valar morghulis," she said, as loud as if she'd known what it meant. "Valar dohaeris," he replied, touching his brow with two fingers. "Of course you shall have a cabin." -George R. R. Martin |
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We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is a
darkness in us. If you ever love a woman, Rand, leave her and let
her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her. -Robert Jordan |
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"ISAM!" The guttural roar roase like thunder, and Trollocs appeared, each half again as tall as a man and twice as wide, trotting into the fields to halt beyond bowshot, a hulking, black-mailed mass, deep and stretching the length of the village. Thousands of them packed together, huge faces distorted by beaks and snouts, heads with horns or feathered crests, spikes at elbows and shoulders, scythe-curved swords and spiked axes, hooked spears and barbed tridents, a seemingly endless sea of cruel weapons. Behind them, Myrddraal galloped up and down on midnight horses, raven-black cloaks hanging undisturbed as they whirled their mounts. "Interesting," Verin murmered. Perrin would not have thought that was the word. -Robert Jordan |
How many times did my baby
cry? And nobody came to him. She could not move, could not open her
eyes. Better I never knew. Nothing
could be worse than this. -Tad Williams |
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"Do you know what happened to the Aiel at
Tzora?" He nodded, and she sighed, reaching out to smooth his short
hair as if he were a child. "Of course you do. You Da'shain have more
courage than... Ten thousand Aiel linking arms and singing, trying to
remind a madman of who they were and who he had been, trying to turn
him with their bodies and a song. Jaric Mondoran killed them. He stood
there, staring as though at a puzzle, killing them, and they kept
closing their lines and singing. I am told he listened to the last Aiel
for almost an hour before destroying him. And then Tzora burned, one
huge flame consuming stone and metal and flesh. There is a sheet of
glass where the second greatest city in the world once stood."
"Many people had time to flee, Aes Sedai. The Da'shain earned them time to flee. We are not afraid -Robert Jordan |
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Misc. Quotations |
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He says so ... and he says so ... Like zeroes, say-sos don't sum. - William Gass
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How can I
be substantial if I fail to cast a Shadow? I must have a dark-side also if
I am to be whole; and insasmuch as I become conscious of
my Shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other. - Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 35 |
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-Thomas Szasz |
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. - Samuel Adams |
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But I have seen the science I
worshiped and the airplane I loved -- Lindbergh Jr., Charles A[ugustus] (1902-1974) |
Night has brought to those who sleep -Roma Ryan
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- Thomas Szasz
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There is the old brute, too, the
savage, the hairy man who dabbles his fingers in ropes of entrails; and
gobbles and belches; whose speech is guttural, visceral—well, he is here.
He squats in me. [Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), British novelist. Bernard, in The Waves, bk. 2, p. 205 (1931, Hogarth edition, 1943).] |
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By the time you swear you're his, Shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is Infinite, undying-- Lady, make a note of this: One of you is lying. -Dorothy Parker "Unfortunate Coincidence" |
You're under arrest for child cruelty, child endangerment, depriving children of food, selling children AS food, and misrepresenting the weight of livestock. -Some Futurama Episode |
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God / Religion / Death |
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"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer
god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other
possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -Stephen F Roberts
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If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. -Thomas Szasz |
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...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him! -Mark Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger
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Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
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Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
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Sadness |
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...a family brought love, and distributed it among many objects, and intensified it, and this engendered wearing cares and anxieties, and when the objects suffered or died the miseries and anxieties multiplied and broke the heart and shortened life...
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Oh, this human life, this earthy life, this weary life! It is so
groveling, and so mean; its ambitions are so paltry,
its prides so trivial, its vanities so
childish; and the glories that it values and
applauds- lord, how empty!
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Tell me what
a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy
of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his
valuation of himself.
[...] Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (I love you Ayn!) |
If I had a shiny gun, I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folk who give me pains; Or had I some poison gas, I could make the moments pass Bumping off a number of People whom I do not love. But I have no lethal weapon- Thus does Fate our pleasure step on! So they still are quick and well Who should be, by rights, in hell.
- Dorothy Parker |
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So much pleasure, and so little joy; so much learning, and so little wisdom; ... the one divine thing left to us is sadness. ... Without sadness where were brotherliness? ... She is the Spartan sauce which gives gust to the remainder-viands of life, the broken meats of love. ... All things take on beauty which pass through the hueless flame of her aureole.
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Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess
that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not
of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest
love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values
but in response to flaws [...] He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex--nothing but shame. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged |
There are as many nights as days, and the
one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy
life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would
lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. - C. G. Jung |
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They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. -Psalms 126:5
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If God is what people say there
can be no one in the universe so unhappy as He; for He sees unceasingly
myriads of His creatures suffering unspeakable miseries--and besides this
foresees how they are going to suffer during the remainder of their lives.
One might as well say, "As unhappy as God." |
