I love great quotes. Love using them. Love finding new ones. Love reading about the context behind them. I've found that as eloquent as I am capable of being, there is always someone who has said it better.
Thought it would be nice to post favorites here for reference and posterity.
I'm reading a new book on naval aviation and each chapter starts with a good quote...here are some I've read so far:
QuoteThose who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.
-Unknown
QuoteExperience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.
-Vernon Law
QuoteA diamond is a chunk of coal that is made good by applying pressure.
-Henry A. Kissinger
Quote
If you're going through hell, keep moving!
- Winston Churchill
^That first one is quite the kicker.
"These pretzels are making me thirsty!"
-Jerry Seinfeld
My favorite is from my deceased Dad: "Those who can't think have to feel."
I like the one about experience. "Where the People fear the Government, there is Tyranny. Where the Government fears the People, there is Liberty". George Washington.
Great idea for a thread! I challenge anyone to find a more eloquently worded version of the Silent Disapproval Robot quote found in my sig. 8)
Not sure if film quotes are what you're really looking for, but here are a couple great ones that I feel are applicable:
QuoteA King may move a man, a father may claim a son, but remember that even when those who move you be Kings, or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus." Or that, "Virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that.
- King Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven
QuoteEvery day above ground is a good day.
- Mel Bernstein in Scarface
Quote
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other."
-John Stuart Mill
"Beer is a sign God loves us and wants us to be happy." Ben Franklin
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." PJ O'Rourke
"The Contest is not always to the Strong, nor the race to the Swift. But that's the way to bet". Or words to that effect. Paul 'Bear' Bryant. :notworthy:
QuoteNothing is quite as exhilarating as being shot at with no effect.
- Winston Churchill
;D Winston Churchill may hold the title of 'Most Quotable Man Who Ever Lived.'
Quote from: al_infierno on October 19, 2020, 10:27:54 PM
;D Winston Churchill may hold the title of 'Most Quotable Man Who Ever Lived.'
From a Great Insults email I received recently:
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Winston Churchill
"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one. "
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
Winston Churchill, in response
Winston Churchill was most certainly the man. A rare breed.
Quote
MP Bessie Braddock: Winston, you are drunk, and what's more you are disgustingly drunk.
Winston Churchill: My dear, you are ugly, and what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly."
^One of my favorites, with the added zing of 'disgusting,' which I have never seen before.
QuoteBetter crippled in body than corrupt in mind
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, page 182
"Your status as a doomed man lends your words a certain prestige and authority. As the time nears, I think you'll find that people will be eager to hear what you have to say. They will seek you out. [...] You can't let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gavel-voiced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor."
- Don DeLillo, White Noise
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
^Wow...that is some quote.
Quote from: al_infierno on December 08, 2020, 07:48:31 PM
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
I can't help but read this to the voice of Anton Chigurh in my head.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on December 08, 2020, 08:48:12 PM
I can't help but read this to the voice of Anton Chigurh in my head.
Heh, the Judge in BM is quite a similar character to Chigurh so it makes sense. O0
"It took me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realize that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Giudecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the existence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise. It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it."
- Samuel Beckett, "First Love"
"Friends are enemies who have not attacked you yet."
- Skipper the Penguin from the Madagascar cartoon series. (haven't seen it myself, full disclaimer ;D but someone posted this on a quotes thread on another forum and I had to share it here.)
^That one rings a little too true.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 29, 2021, 10:22:53 PM
"Friends are enemies who have not attacked you yet."
- Skipper the Penguin from the Madagascar cartoon series. (haven't seen it myself, full disclaimer ;D but someone posted this on a quotes thread on another forum and I had to share it here.)
;D :D That was in a children's cartoon series? Brutal lesson to learn when you're 8 :))
Quote from: rustyshackleford on January 29, 2021, 10:28:46 PM
Quote from: al_infierno on January 29, 2021, 10:22:53 PM
"Friends are enemies who have not attacked you yet."
- Skipper the Penguin from the Madagascar cartoon series. (haven't seen it myself, full disclaimer ;D but someone posted this on a quotes thread on another forum and I had to share it here.)
;D :D That was in a children's cartoon series? Brutal lesson to learn when you're 8 :))
Watch
Watership Down or
Grave of the Fireflies; animated movies guaranteed to scar kids
"What is it?"
"The uh, stuff that dreams are made of."
- The Maltese Falcon
Maybe not quotable in the traditional sense, but one of the finest pieces of prose I've ever read. A description of a Comanche attack against a band of ragtag American filibusters from the novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
"You seem to think peace is a natural state, Siward, and conflict its interruption, but the truth is the exact opposite. Peace is what the sea looks like in a dead calm--a rare and beautiful moment--something impossible--a glimpse of perfection before the wind comes back again. You can no more force peace into existence than you can wander across the surface of the sea stamping the waves flat."
- King Malcolm in the play Dunsinane by David Greig
:dreamer:
"When people start talking about their bowel movements they are as inexorable as the processes of which they speak."
- William Burroughs, Junky
I am personally affronted by that one 💩
Yes. With a 2-1/2 year old in the house, there is always a lot of talk about poop and pooping.
QuoteA man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.
QuoteYe carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs.
Cormac McCarthy,
Blood Meridian
^That second one...
Quote from: al_infierno on February 25, 2022, 06:22:31 PM
QuoteA man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.
QuoteYe carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs.
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Great website, Al_infierno!
(https://preview.redd.it/0tcvbml1h1k81.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7bf17eebe3a70e488dfe10c32e5b0b764adc1825)
:notworthy:
Quote from: MengJiao on February 26, 2022, 08:43:31 AM
Quote from: al_infierno on February 25, 2022, 06:22:31 PM
QuoteA man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.
QuoteYe carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs.
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Great website, Al_infierno!
Thank you! :peace:
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on February 26, 2022, 11:22:26 AM
(https://preview.redd.it/0tcvbml1h1k81.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7bf17eebe3a70e488dfe10c32e5b0b764adc1825)
A masterpiece.
Totally lost me on that one Star. Damn that line is getting long.
Quote from: Windigo on April 13, 2022, 02:42:04 PM
Totally lost me on that one Star. Damn that line is getting long.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/ukraine-island-defenders-who-told-russian-officer-go-fuck-yourself-may-still-be-alive
they were already exchanged for russian pows.
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on April 13, 2022, 05:49:26 PM
they were already exchanged for russian pows.
I know. But I guessed that meme without context might come across as a bit weird for Windigo.
Anything from the modern age (last 600 years) is weird for Windy.
The Ancient World was a lot of fun. I remember when Syphilis first showed-up. Man did we fun pulling that one on our friends. :2funny:
Better than gonorrhea?
Quote from: Pete Dero on April 14, 2022, 03:48:31 AM
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on April 13, 2022, 05:49:26 PM
they were already exchanged for russian pows.
I know. But I guessed that meme without context might come across as a bit weird for Windigo.
I was not thinking about the Ukraine War, I was definitely thinking more "WTF RTS gaming inside joke is this?"
*Shrug
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6lkxRDX0AQPApK.jpg)
.... probably in the next year or two, you will discover the joy to be had in screaming at the odd strato-nimbus .
I started years ago.
I scream at road signs. But they always start it. >:(
Men are born for games, nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself, but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents, and the humiliation of defeat and pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake.
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease.
What right man would have it any other way? he said.
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian