Favorite Quotes and Passages

[Sixt]

I laughed out loud as I read the following from Charles Dickens "David Copperfield" today:

"Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright. It gave him a surprised look - not to say a hearth-broomy kind of expression - which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.

I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little -

'My dear Copperfield,' said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and rubbing his hair all kinds of ways, 'nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it won't.'

'Won't be smoothed down?' said I.

'No,' said Traddles. 'Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.' "

[Rillion]

I think Turner's painting The Slave Ship is entirely respectable, in spite of Mark Twain's description of it from which I'll never stop giggling: "A tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes."

[suswisqui]

Originally Posted by Rillion

I think Turner's painting The Slave Ship is entirely respectable, in spite of Mark Twain's description of it from which I'll never stop giggling: "A tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes."

Good work !
Very cool, looking great so far. Keep going, I wanna see it finished! :idea:

[cyan]

Originally Posted by suswisqui

Good work !
Very cool, looking great so far. Keep going, I wanna see it finished! :idea:

Ahaha hey yeah I remember that one. Holy crap that was key.

Enlarge your pianist.

[Harrok]

I like

"Experience is a good teacher, not a kind one."

Comes off of some Magic the Gathering flavor text, no less. Geeky, yes.

[onijitsu]

Pippin: *WHAT* were you thinking, Peregrin Took? What service could you offer to such a mighty lord of men?
Faramir: It was a great gesture. Good intentions should not be checked by cold council. So, you have joined the tower guard?
Pippin: I didn't think they would find a uniform to fit me.
Faramir: This once belonged to a young, foolish boy, who spent more time slaying dragons than doing his studies.
Pippin: This was yours?
Faramir: Yes. My father had it made for me.
Pippin: Well, I'm taller than you were then. Though I'm not likely to grow anymore... except sideways.
[both laugh]

[mephron]

Faramir was way cooler in the book.

One of my favorite quotes about facing one of the most incredible fears a person can face:

"I’ve no surety that it is. I know only parts of what I feel; I may be misnaming the whole. You dwell in my mind like a household spirit. All that I think is followed with, ‘I shall tell that thought to Eddi.’ Whatever I see or hear is colored by what I imagine you will say of it. What is amusing is twice so, if you have laughed at it. There is a way you have of turning your head, quickly with a little tilt, that seems more wonderful to me than the practiced movements of dancers. All this, taken together, I’ve come to think of as love, but it may not be.

It is not a comfortable feeling. But I find that, even so, I would wish the same feeling on you. The possibility that I suffer it alone–that frightens me more than all the host of the Unseelie Court."
— The Phouka's confession to Eddi McCandry, War for the Oaks by Emma Bull

[Melyanna]

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

~Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

~Caliban

[lou002]

I probably quote it wrong (or maybe it was the edition I read in HS/Catholic University) but it's from Paradise Lost, when Satan is giving his big speech:

"A mind changed by neither time nor place, can make a heaven of hell; and a hell of heaven."

That's stuck in my mind for 5+ years now.

[onijitsu]

Originally Posted by Melyanna

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land!”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

~ Sir Walter Scott