This is a collection of quotes and short pieces, some tht I originally put together about 10 years ago of some of my favorite quotes, poems, snips of text, etc. The authors are noted when known.Will be updated from time to time.

• I wrote a commentary after watching "Saving Private Ryan"
• Link to text written by JMS reflecting on the September 11th tragedy - text found and compiled here, reposted here for redundancy. And then there's my poor, short piece
  

Babylon 5 Quotes

“When something we value is destroyed, we rebuild it. If it's destroyed again we rebuild it again. And again, and again, and again. Until it stays.” - Sinclair

"No. We have to stay here, and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics - and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars." - Sinclair

"It was...Abraham Lincoln, who best described our situation: The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We can not escape history. We will be remembered, in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the last generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose our last best hope." – Sheridan

“The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is nor Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari. It speaks in the langauge of hope, it speaks in the langauge of trust, it speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But, always, it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors, speaking through us, and the voice of our inheritors, waiting to be born. It is the small, still voice that says: We are one. No matter the blood. No matter the skin. No matter the world. No matter the star. We are one. No matter the pain. No matter the darkness. No matter the loss. No matter the fear. We are one. Here, gathered together in common cause, we agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: That we must be kind to one another. Because, each voice enriches us and enobles us and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the Universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light the way to a better future. We are one. We are one.” - G’Kar, The Declaration of Principles for the Interstellar Alliance

"We're all born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars, molecules that do not understand politics, policies and differences. In a billion years we, foolish molecules forget who we are and where we came from. Desperate acts of ego. We give ourselves names, fight over lines on maps. And pretend our light is better than everyone else's. The flame reminds us of the piece of those stars that live inside us. A spark that tells us: you should know better. The flame also reminds us that life is precious, as each flame is unique. When it goes out, it's gone forever. And there will never be another quite like it. So many candles will go out tonight. I wonder some days if we can see anything at all." - Delenn

"We are the universe, trying to figure itself out. Unfortunately we as software lack any coherent documentation." - Londo

"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
--Marcus

The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station and the nebula outside, that burn in the stars themselves. We are starstuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And as we have both learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective."
--Delenn

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson, from "Ulysses" (quoted by Sinclair)

"There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope. The death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revalation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that is always paved in pain."
--G'Kar

“The Humans, I think, knew they were doomed. But where another race would surrender to despair, the Humans fought back with even greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life I have never seen anything like it. They would weep. They would pray. They would say goodbye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself, never surrendering. No one who saw them fight against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage... their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns. When they ran out of guns they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes in the end. They did this for two years. But in the end, they didn't run out of courage, they ran out of time.” - Londo

If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God. But the light is not the goal of the search; it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it! Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God, is the byproduct of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished, not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do! Or we turn to look at our shadow, and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose; which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty - and in all its flaws. And in so doing better understand the world around us.
- G'Kar

"The war is never completely won. There are always new battles to be fought against the darkness. Only the names change." - Delenn

"...Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else." - Delenn

"Who am I? I'm Susan Ivanova, Commander, daughter of Andrei and Sofie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is gonna kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I'm death incarnate and the last living thing that you're ever going to see. God sent me." -- Ivanova

"Ivanova is always right.
I will listen to Ivanova.
I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations.
Ivanova is god.
And, if this ever happens again,
Ivanova will personally RIP YOUR LUNGS OUT!!!"
-- Ivanova

"Can god make a rock so big, that even he can't lift it? I wonder if that's the wrong question. I wonder if the right question is: Can god create a puzzle so difficult, a riddle so complex that even he can't solve it? What if that's us? Maybe a problem like this is god's way of doing to us a little of what we do to him." - Franklin

"Faith sustains us in the hour when reason tells us that we can not continue, that the whole of our whole lives is without meaning. Not useless, but it is also not enough. Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than you can with just one. That's all that faith requires. That we surrender ourselves to the possibility of hope. For that I'm content." -- Brother Alwyn

"From time to time, you will make mistakes. They're inevitable. Sometimes those mistakes will be .. huge. What matters is that you learn from them....At times, you may end up far away from home. You may not be sure of where you belong anymore. But home is always there. Because home is not a place. It's wherever your passion takes you.... Fight .. for what you believe. Which brings me to the .. first piece of advice my dad ever gave me, and now I'm giving it to you. Never--never start a fight. But always finish it....Always finish it." -- Sheridan

"If you can create sufficient fear in your enemies, you may not have to fight them. Always remember that terror is also a form of communication." --Delenn

Rastenn (Ranger in training): "Death for a cause is one thing, but death without meaning..."
Sech Turval (Ranger teacher): "If I told you to climb a mountain and bring me a flower from the highest point, and you will die after completing your task, would that be meaningless?
Rastenn: "Of course. It's trivial."
Sech Turval: "And if there were a million people waiting at the base of that mountain, to whom that one flower was a symbol of their freedom, and they would follow that symbol and your death into a struggle that would liberate half a billion souls, would that have a meaning? ... You see? We create the meaning in our lives. It does not exist independently. Being A'nla'shok [a Ranger] does not mean worrying about what others will think about us. It does not mean deciding what to do based upon whether or not it serves our sense of ego or destiny. It means living each moment as if it were your last one. It means doing each right thing because it is the right thing. The scale doesn't matter. The where, the when, the how or in what cause, none of those things matter. In my life, I've discovered very few truths. Here is the greatest truth I know: Your death, Rastenn, will have a meaning, if it comes while you're in fullest pursuit of your heart."

"I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite. --A guard

"Where is it written that all our dreams must be small ones?" - Byron

"Prophecy is a guess that comes true. When it isn't, it's a metaphor." - Vir

"Faith manages."

If you cannot say what you mean, you cannot mean what you say. The details are everything.
- Centauri intelligence officer

So you're caught in between. Unable to go forward or backward. Your friends need what you can be when you are no longer afraid. When you know who you are and why you are and what you want. When you are no longer looking for reasons to live, but can simply, be.
- Lorien

Londo: But, we have treaties!!
Refa: Ink on a page!!
- conversation about acting against the rules of war

Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is eternal.
- Lorien

Patience is also a weapon when used properly.
-Lorien

Claim victory in your heart and the universe will follow.
- Marcus (who claims the the Minbari said it)

Touch passion when it comes your way, Stephen. It's rare enough as it is. Don't walk away when it calls you by name.
- Marcus

We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away.
- G'Kar

I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.
- G'Kar

Why does any advanced civilization seek to destroy a less advanced one? Because the land is strategically valuable, because there are resources that can be cultivated and exploited, but most of all - simply because they can. You have experienced much the same on your own world. There are humans for whom the words "never again" carry special meaning. As they do for us.
- G'Kar

I have seen what power does, and I have seen what power costs. The one is never equal to the other.
- G'Kar

Londo Mollari: No. I said where you go, I go. It's become a matter of principle.
G'Kar: You picked a terrible moment in your social evolution to develop principles. Perhaps you can start with something simpler. The moral equivalent of the opposable thumb, for instance.

You cannot make history. You can only hope to survive it.
- G'Kar

There's nothing political about the truth
- Londo

Every time I have been happy the universe has conspired to do something nasty to me
- Londo

Insanity is part of the times. You must learn to embrace the madness. Let it fire you.
- Londo

Do you know what this is? No I can see you do not, you have that vacant look in your eyes that says "hold my head to your ear, you will hear the sea.
- Londo

Ambassador Londo Mollari: When I said my quarters were cold, I did not mean, 'Oh, I think it's a little chilly in here, perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed.' No, I said it was COLD, as in, 'Oh, my left arm has snapped off like an icicle and shattered on the floor'! This is highly inappropriate, Captain!
Captain John Sheridan: You're right. There are several other parts of your body I'd much rather see snapped off.

It's bad luck to die on an empty stomach.
- G'Kar

Compassion is a rare commodity these days.
- G'Kar

While all answers are replies, all replies are not answers.
- Ta'lon

You can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than just a kind word.
- Marcus

War is as much a concept as it is execution. Delight, respect, compassion - for your actions to be pure, they must proceed from direction, determination, patience and strength. I'm afraid I'm still working on patience.
- Marcus

There's no profit in might-have-beens. We learn from our mistakes.
- G'Kar

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.
- Kosh

A stroke of the brush does not guarantee art from the bristles.
- Kosh

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
- G'Kar

We all believe in something... greater than ourselves, even if it's just the blind forces of chance.
- G'Kar

The third principle of sentient life is the capacity for self-sacrifice, the conscious ability to override evolution and self-preservation for a cause, a friend, a loved one.
- Delenn

Where is it written that all our dreams must be small ones?
- Byron

May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk
- Sheridan (later Ivanova - said to be an "old Egyptian blessing")

It is said that the future is always born in pain. The history of war is the history of pain. If we are wise, what is born of that pain matures into the promise of a better world, because we learn that we can no longer afford the mistakes of the past.
- G'Kar

If you do not know the present, how can you claim to know the future?
- Lennier

There's always the threat of an attack by say, a giant space dragon. The kind that eats the sun once every 30 days. It's a nuisance, but what can you expect from reptiles? Did I mention that my nose is on fire? And that I have 15 wild badgers living in my trousers? ... I'm sorry, would you prefer ferrets?
- Marcus

Only an idiot would fight a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.
- Londo

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.
- G'Kar

- all above written by J. Michael Straczynski from the TV series Babylon 5

'I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God that has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.'
- Aristotle

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers,
knocking at the door.
I want to go out, don't know if I can,
'cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.

- Traditional

Red Sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky at morning, take warning.

- Stephen King, Tommyknockers

Leighton Street

These streets begin where the cobles
surface through tar like the heads
of children buried badly in their textures.

What myth is this?
We ask, but
the children who play stickball and
Johnny Jump-My-Pony round here just laugh.

"No myth," they tell us "no myth,"
just they say "hey motherfucker aint
nothing but Leighton Street here,
aint nothing but all small houses
aint only but back porches where our mothers
wash there and they're and their."

Where days grow hot
and on Leighton Street they listen to the radio
while pterodactyls flow between the T.V. aerials
on the roof and they say "hey motherfucker" they say
"Hey motherfucker!"

"No myth" tey tell us "no myth"
just they say "hey motherfucker aint
nothing but Leighton Street round here."

"This" they say "is how you be silent in
your silent of days." Motherfucker.

When we turned out back on these upstate roads,
warehouses with faces of blank brick,
when you say, "O, but I have reached the end
of all I know and still hear her grinding,
grinding in the night."

- Stephen King, Tommyknockers

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- Yeats

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born first must
destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.

- Demian, Herman Hesse

It takes years to find the nerve to be apart from what you've done; to find the truth inside
yourself and not depend on anyone.

- All the Way, New Order

Fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the
foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

- Steinbeck

Ride a wild horse into the sky
Hold tight his wings before you die
Whatever else you leave undone,
Ride a wild horse into the sun.

- Frost

Fear no more the heat o' th' sun
Nor the furious winters' rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' th' great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke.
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.

- William Shakespeare - from 'The Tragedy of Cymbeline"

There was one true Christian. He died on the cross.

- Nietzche

I don't know what I want but I know how to get it.

- Sex Pistols

Fear is the mind killer.

- F.H.

The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but Size. Size encompasses life...
...Size defeats us.

- Stephen King, The Gunslinger

If you fell outward the the ilmit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs
reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard. And rounded, as the chick must
see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell, what great and
torrential light might shine through your hole at the end of space? Might you look through
and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be
forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence
rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?

- Stephen King, The Gunslinger

...as Confucius once said, five hundred million Red Chinese don't give a shit.

-Stephen King, The Gunslinger Afterward


It was salty, painful to his mouth, and tasted like tears.

- Stephen King

He fled the insanity the knowledge implied, and so came back to himself.

- S.K.

Few if any seemed to have grasped the Principle of Reality; new knowledge leads always to
yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the
existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search.

- S.K.

...now you approach the limits - not of belief, but of comprehension. You face reverse
entropy of the soul.

-S.K.

...if a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horseshit even if words
continue to march across the page.

-S.K.

Epigram

Sir, I admit your general rule
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it
That every fool is not a poet.

- S.T. Coleridge

The Saddest Words

...Of all the words of tongue or pen,
The saddest words are these: "It might have been."

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth anf height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
- Elizabeth Barret Browning
The Conqueror Worm

Lo! Tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly -
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama - oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot
With its phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that never returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, Amid he mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! - It writhes! - with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin gore imbued.

Out - out are the lights - out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm,
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

- Edgar Allan Poe

I Never Saw a Moor

I never saw a moor
I never saw the sea;
Yet I know how the heather looks
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

- Emily Dickinson

Because I Could Not Stop For Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day.
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

- Emily Dickinson


I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of a storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What potion of me I
Could make assignable, - and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

- Emily Dickinson

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jaberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
the frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome for he sought
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came.

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh, Callay!"
He chortled in his joy

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

- Lewis Carroll


When I was One-and-Twenty

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise-man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas,
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am one-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

- A.E. Housman

Infant Innocence

The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant is not aware
It has been eaten by the bear.

- A.E. Housman

The Sea-Gull

Hark to the whimper of the sea-gull;
He weeps because he's not an ea-gull.
Suppose you were, you silly sea-gull,
Could you explain it to your she-gull?

- O. Nash

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- R. Frost

Reflections On Ice-Breaking

Candy But liquor
is dandy, is quicker.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

The took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- R. Frost

The Turtle

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

- O. Nash

Soliloquy

Tommorow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying Nothing.

-W. Shakespeare

"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its
vigour? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man
doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weekness
of his feeble will."

-E.A. Poe

"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead - dead to the World,
to Heaven, and to hope! In me didst thou exist - and, in my death, see by this image, which
is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

-E.A. Poe

"Out, damned spot, Out, I say! - One, two;
Why then 'tis time to do't - Hell is murky!
- Fie my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard?
What need we fear who knows it, when none
Can call our power to account? - Yet who
Would have though the old man to have has
So much blood in him?"

-W. Shakespeare

"Thou knowst the mask of night is on my
face
Else would a maiden blush bepaint
my cheek..."

"Good night, good night, parting is such
sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be
morrow..."

"Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy
breast
Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet
to rest."

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard
It seems most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."

"Cowards die many times before their death.
The valiant never taste of death but once."

-W. Shakespeare

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow -
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand -
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
Oh God, can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
Oh God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

-E.A. Poe

"Thou wast that all to me, love
For which my soul did pine -
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
A wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, Starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the future cries,
"On! on!" - but O'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er
"No more - no more - no more"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
to the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

Now all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams -
In what ethereal dances,
By what Italian streams.

Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From love to tilted age and crime,
And an unholy pillow -
From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!"

-E.A. Poe

"Jack [Nicholson] gave up the idea about getting older. He looked at his hair, he looked at
his stomach, and he said, 'fuck 'em'."

- Sylbert, Premiere

"...making and selling movies is much similar to a political campaign. 'On November 4,
they're going to vote, so don't sodomize that giraffe until November 6.'"

- Warren Beatty

"He gives an artist's intensity in a field where art has no meaning."

- Bo Goldman (writer) on Warren Beatty

"We can hold hands and watch the sun rise from the bottom of the sea."

-Jimi Hendrix

"There was a beautiful white horse
I saw in a dream stage,
He had a snake the size of a sewer pipe
Living in his ribcage."

-The Who

"A man has two reasons for the things that he does
The first one is pride and the second one is love.
All understanding must come by this way.
She lifted her arms and she floated away."

-Husker Du

"There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly into the other."

-Proverbs of Muad `dib.

"I haven't forgotten
And you haven't forgotten
Let's forget together someday
These days, I remain."

-REM

"I take a stroll down by the sea
and walk along the pier
then I slip and hit my head, now's the time to fear.
I see the surface, see the rocks, see my past fly swiftly by
I feel the water in my lungs and wake up screaming for my life."

-Pogues

"That's how you keep 'em humble. You don't let 'em say goodnight to nobody."

-Paulie, The Pope of Greenwich Village

"I'm not very good with women. I tend to dribble."

- Woody Allen

"Dream of better lives, the kind which never hate
trapped in a state of imaginary grace.
I made a pilgrimage to save this human's race
Never comprehending the race had long gone by."

- Modern English

"Still, there's a lot I hold before me
And you're the measure of my dreams."

- Pogues

"My friends would think I was a nut
turning water into wine.
Open doors would soon be shut."

- Peter Gabriel

"When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, the dream is gone."

- Pink Floyd

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf's a flower,
Yet only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down today;
Nothing gold can stay.

- R. Frost

"No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away from the
Coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It's not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?"

- Pink Floyd

"Disreputables run on a thin, placid line
Straight ahead.
Their love, and integer on a length of fear.
So the potent meanings of our faith
Become misconstrued among the believers."

- J.J. Phantom

"Like a rainbow in the sky
Or a butterfly,
It seems beautiful to me.

When your smile lights the way
On a cold and dreary day
It seems so beautiful to me.

I feel warm inside
As the day goes by
And I spend it all with you.

I'll still feel the same
When the day ends
And the night takes over the blue.

As we say goodbye, the stars corrupt the sky;
You smile, so beautifully, at me.

"I love you," I whisper
As I wish upon a star
Tomorrow, I wonder where you'll be."

- J.J. Phantom

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given in our hearts away, a sordid boon!..."

- Wordsworth

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies..."

- Lord Byron

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

- W. Shakespeare

"Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in
my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite
Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write."

- Sir Philip Sidney

"Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute after noon, is night."

- John Donne

"That as the world serves us we may serve thee,
And both thy servants be."

- George Herbert

"Not a day passes, not a minute or second
without an accouchement,
Not a day passes, not a minute or a second
without a corpse."

- Tennyson

The Leaden-Eyed

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp, and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly;
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve;
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

- Vachel Lindsay
Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quiet arrayed,
And he was alwaya human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we though that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

SO on we worked, and waited for the light
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
An Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

- Edwin Arlington Robinson

"How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly he spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!"

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Father William

"You are old, Father WIlliam," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William said to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again..."

- Lewis Carroll

"'Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with his eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemtuous tones of the Shark:
But when tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound."

- L. Carroll

"I don't want the world,
I just want your half."

- TMBG

"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer day:
The knave of hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them quite away!"

- L. Carroll

"...Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in the golden gleam -
Life, what is it but a dream?

"Clover's old eyes flitted from one face to another. And as the animals outside looked from
pig to man, and man to pig, and pig to man again, it seemed that some strange thing was
happening. It was impossible to say which was which."

- George Orwell, Animal Farm

"Well, we picked up Harry Truman, floating down
from Independence,
We said, "What about the war?"
He said, "Good riddance!"
We said, "What about the bomb? Are you sorry
that you did it?"
He said, "Pass me that bottle and mind your own bidness."

- The Rainmakers


"...In the spaceship, the silver spaceship, the lion takes control...
...Hush my darling, be still my darling, the lion's on the phone...
...In the space ship, the silver spaceship, the lion waves goodbye...
...In the space ship, the silver spaceship, the lion sleeps tonight...

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

- The Who

"Over the mountain
thunder, magic foam,
let the people know my wisdom,
fill the land with smoke.
Run through the jungle...
Don't look back to see..."

- Creedence

"O every night and every day
A little piece of you is falling away...
Toe your line and play their game
Let the anaesthetic cover it all
Till one day they call you name:
You're only waiting for the hammer to fall."

- Queen

"Find a way to my heart
And I will be with you
From wherever you are
I'll be waiting...
I'll keep a place in my heart
You will see it shining through
So find a way to my heart
And I will - I will follow you."

- Phil Collins

"Love, I get so lost sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to place you are."

- Peter Gabriel

"In this proud land we grew up string
We were wanted all along.
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never though I could fail.

No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted.
I've changed me face, I've changed my name
But no one wants you when you lose.

Don't give up
'Cause you have friends
Don't give up
Your friends are close behind."

- Peter Gabriel

"After all, tomorrow is another day!"

- Scarlett O'Hara, GWTW

"The skies rained Death..."

- GWTW

"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few."

- Shelley


"Ah, woe is me!
What have I dared? where am I lifted? how
Shall I descend, and perish not? I know
That love makes all things equal: I have heard
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In loveand worship, blends itself with God."

- Shelley

"...- I love thee; yes I feel
That on the fountain if my heart a seal
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright
For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight.
We - are we not formed, as noted of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar;
Such difference without discord, as can make
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake
As trembling leaves in a continuous air?"

- Shelley

"The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison, - flame..."

- Shelley

"The moon made thy lips pale, beloved -
The wind made thy bosom chill -
The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will."

- Shelley

"This most familiar scene, my pain -
These tombs - alone remain...

- Shelley

"Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one."

- Shelley

"Eternal nothingness is Ok if you're dressed for it."

- Woody Allen

"...[she had,] of course the appropriate hostility toward all deserving targets: politicians,
television, facelifts, the architecture of housing projects, men in leisure suits, film courses,
and people who begin their sentences with 'basically'."

- Woody Allen

"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. Tolkein (Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings)

"Naur an edraith ammen! Naur dan i ngaurhoth!"

-Fire Spell by Gandolf

"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!
silivren penna m’riel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-d’riel
o galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, s’ nef aearon!"

- Elf Song

"I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
Of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door."

- Tolkein (Fellowship..)

"...pedo mellen a minno (speak friend, and enter)"

"Nam‡ri‘!" (Farewell!)"

- Tolkein

"...Your obligation is
not discharged by any common rite.
What you must do must be done on your own

so get back in harness. The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work - lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night

dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here. And don't be so earnest,

let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes.
Let go, let fly, forget.
You've listened long enough. Now strike your note."

- Seamus Heaney (from "Station Island")

"Who cares...anymore? The English language
belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires,

a waste of time for somebody your age.
That subject people stuff is a cod's game.
infantile, like your peasant pilgrimage.

You lose more of yourself than you redeem
doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it's time to swim

out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,

elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea."

-Seamus Heaney from "Station Island"

"We need merely to see a desert sunrise, the cold
gleam of the sun on a frozen lake on a winter morning,
a happy smile on a two-year-old, a touch of a friendly hand,
the warmth of reconciliation - to both encounter our own
limitations and also encounter a hint of gratuity which may
go beyond those limitations."

- Unknown Christian author

"The child is the father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

There once was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light;
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more...

...Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about is in our infancy!...

...What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind....

...Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

- Wordsworth

"Uh, 22 pounds of chicken, and 18 eggplants..."

- Letterman

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So it was when life began;
so is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

- Wordsworth

"Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

- "Batman" the movie

"though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not love, I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal.

and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand
all the mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith,
so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.

and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
and though I give my body to be burned, and have
not love it profiteth me nothing.

love suffers long, and is kind; love envieth not;
love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own,
is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;

rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.

love never fails: but whether there be prophecies,
they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease;
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

for we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

but when that which is perfect is come, then that
which is in part shall be done away.

when I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought
as a child: but when I became a man,
I put away childish things.

for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then,
face to face: now I know in part; but then
shall I know even as also I am known.

and now abides faith, hope, love, these three;
and the greatest of these is love."

- St. Paul I Corinthians

"No one knows whether death may not be
the greatest of all blessings for a man,
yet men fear it as if they knew that it is
the greatest of all evils. And surely it is
the most blameworthy ignorance to believe
that one knows what one does not know."

- Plato Apology

"Wealth does not bring about excellence,
but excellence beings about wealth and all
other public and private blessings for men."

- Apology

"A man who really fights for justice must
lead a private, not a public life if he is to
survive for even a short time."

- Apology

"...an unexamined life is not worth living..."

- Apology

"[No] man should, on trial or in war,
contrive to avoid death at any cost."

- Apology

"It is not difficult to avoid death,...it is
much more difficult to avoid wickedness,
for it runs faster than death."

- Apology

"The progress of reason is slow, the roots
of prejudice lie deep. Doubtless, I shall
never see the fruits of my efforts, but
they are seeds which may one day germinate."

- Voltaire

"I resolved to seek no other knowledge than
that which I might find within myself..."

- René Descartes

"My own mind is my own church..."

- Thomas Paine

" Seldom do we find that a whole people can be
said to have any Faith at all; except in things
that it can eat and handle. Whensoever it gets any
Faith, its history becomes spirit-stirring, noteworthy."

- Carlyle, French Revolution

"Such ties are not
For those who are call'd to the high destinies
Which purify corrupted commonwealths;
We must forget all feelings save the one,
We must resign all passions save our purpose,
We must behold no object save our country,
And only look on death as beautiful,
So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven,
And draw down freedom on her evermore."

- Byron, Marino Faliero, Act I, sc2

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all."

- Montrose

"Spread in the sight of the lion,
Surely, we said, is the net
Spread but in vain, and the snare
Vain; for the light is aware,
And the common, the chainless air,
Of his coming whom all we cry on;
Sureley in vain is it set.

Surely the day is on our side,
And heaven, and the sacred sun;
Surely the stars, and the bright
Immemorial inscrutable night;
Yea, the darkness, because of our light,
Is no darkness, but blooms as a lower-side
When the winter is over and done."

- Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise: Halt before Rome

"...let your own voice, confident, bold, and joyous,
express your will, express your heart's desire -

"o you whose intellect spins Heaven's third sphere...

...the sacred flame which lights all of creation
burns brightest in what is most like Himself...

...the light of God that shines throughout the heavens
is lit in us, and so, if you desire
enlightenment, ask to your heart's content...

...You whose words bathe me in warmth,
wakening me to life again, the depth
of my deep love is not profound
enough to find the thanks your graciousness deserves -...

...Their sweet accord, their faces spread with bliss,
the love, themystery their tender looks
gave rise in others' hearts to holy thoughts...

...You know my eagerness to hear you speak,
you also know the nature of the question
whose answer I have hungered for so long...

...you better learn to speak your thirst
in order that your cup be filled for you...

...It used to be that wars were waged with swords,
but now one fights withholding here and there
the bread our Father's love denies to none..."

- excerpts from Dante's Paradiso

"Just as no man ever dies
who did not in some condition live
on earth, so there never lived a man
in all this world who did not sometimes die.
The world is but a highway full of sorrow,
and we are pilgrims, passing to and fro;
death is an end of every earthly pain."

- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Knight's Tale"

"Love will not be constrained by mastery;
when mastery comes, the gods of love at once
beats his wings, and farewell - he is gone."

- "Franklin's Tale"

"Love is a thing as free as any spirit..."

- "Franklin's Tale"

"See who is most patient in love:
he has the greatest advantage."

- "Franklin's Tale"

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred... let me sow love.
Where there is injury... pardon.
Where there is discord... unity.
Where there is doubt... faith.
Where there is error...truth.
Where there is despair... hope.
Where there is sadness... joy.
Where there is darkness.. light.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled...as to console.
To be understood.. as to understand.
To be loved... as to love.

for

It is in giving... that we receive.
It is in pardoning... that we are pardoned.
It is in dying... that we are born to eternal life.

- St. Francis

"Praise of other people is tolerable only up to
a certain point, the point where one still
believes that one could do oneself some of the
things one is hearing about....

...Our love of what is beautiful does not lead
to extravagance; our love of the things of the
mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth
as something to be properly used, rather than
something to boast about. As for poverty, no
one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame
is not taking practical measures to escape from it...

...the man who can most truly be accounted brave
is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet
in life and of what is terrible, and then goes out
undeterred to meet what is to come...

...We make friends by doing good to others, not
by receiving good from them...

...One's sense of honor is the only thing that does not
grow old, and the last pleasure, when one is worn out
with age, is not, as the poet said, making money, but
having the respect of one's fellow man...

...Your great glory is not to be inferior to what God
made you, and the greatest glory of a woman is to
be least talked about by men, whether they are praised
by you or criticizing you...

...Where the rewards of valour are the greatest, there you will
find also the best and bravest spirits among the people...

...it is more of a disgrace to be robbed of what one has
than to fail in some new undertaking...

...Confidence, out of a mixture of ignorance and good
luck can be felt even by cowards; but this sense of
superiority comes only to those who, like us, have
real reasons for knowing, that they are better placed
than their opponents..."

- excerpts from Thucydides, Pericles' speeches

"People seem to get nostalgic about a lot of things they
weren't so crazy about the first time around."

- Webster's Crosswords

"...the brave shall be honored with the rewards that
are due to courage..."

- Phormio

"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear
and the blind can read."

- Mark Twain

"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."

- Oscar Wilde

"You can lead a man up to the University, but you can't make him think."

- Finley Peter Dunne

"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has
to transform the photographer into an artist, but
the impulse it gives him to keep on looking."

- Brooks Atkinson

"Children have more need of models than critics."

- Joseph Joubert

"Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so
contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as
inconsistency."

- Joseph Addison

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

- Ancient Proverb

"Every luxury must be paid for, and everything
is a luxury, starting with being in the world."

- Cesare Pavese

"Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting."

- Buckminster Fuller

"Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no quesetions,
they pass no criticisms."

- George Eliot

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how
many of them you can get through, but rather how many
of them can get through to you."

- Mortimer J. Adler

"...it is more disgraceul, at least for those who have a name
to lose, to gain one's ends by deceit which pretends to
be morality than by open violence...

...true wisom is shown by those who can make
careful use of their advantages in the knowledge
that things will change (and so too they will show
more intelligence than others when things are
going wrong with them)."

- Thucydides

"Everyone...has their own particular part to play.
No part is too great or too small, no one is too old
or too young to do something."

- Bobby Sands (Irishman who died on hunger strike in 1981)

"I was taught that the world had a lot of problems;
that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual
And material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility
of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service
is the rent each of us pays for living - the very purpose
of life and not something you do in your spare time
or after you have reached your personal goals."

- Marian Wright Edelman

"It just seems to me that as long as we are both here,
it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the
planet, rather than to divide it."

-Alice Walker

"Ain't nothig' to it but to do it."

-Maya Angelou

"To keep out faces toward change and behave like free
spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

- Helen Keller

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable...
this is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a
time for rigorous, positive action."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It requires somthing more than personal experience
to gain a philosphy or point of view from any specific
event. It is the quality of our response to the event and
our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help
us to make their lives and their experiences our own."

- Emma Goldman

"It is time for a new generation of leadership to cope with
new problems and opportunities. For there is a new world
to be won."

- John F. Kennedy

"In a world as empirical as ours, a youngster who does
not know what he is good at will not be sure what he
is good for."

- E.Z. Friedenburg

"Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve."

- Chinese Proverb

"To achieve great things we must live as though we
were never going to die."

- Vauvenargues

"The important thing is this: to be able at any moment
to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

- C. DuBois

"Where much is expected from an individual, he may
rise to the level of events and make the dream come true."

- E. Hubbard

"Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the
balanced person, provided it arises out of the needs
of life and is dedicated to life's further developments."

- L. Mumford

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty
of being happy."

- R.L. Stevenson

"It is not enough to aim, you must hit."

-Italian Proverb

"The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful
speaker, but who is inwardly and desparately
drunk with a certain belief."

- Emerson

"The strongest man on earth is he who stands
most alone."

- Henrik Ibsen

"Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives
you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you
want to move the world."

- O.W. Holmes

"...life is very fragile, and even if you are given
another twenty-four hours, it's a blessing..."

- Eric Clapton

If there ever were a time to dare to make a difference,
toembark on something worth doing, it is now.
Not for a grand cause, necessarily - but for
something that tugs at your heart, something that's
your aspiration,
something that's your Dream.

You owe it to yourself to make your days here
count.
Have fun. Dig deep. Stretch.
Dream Big
Know, though, that things worth doing seldom
come easy.
There will be good days. And there will be bad days.
There will be tmes when you want to turn around,
pack it up, and call it quits. Those times tell you that
you are pushing yourself, that you are not afraid
to learn by trying.
Persist.
Because with an idea, determination, and the right
tools, you can do great things. Let your instincts,
your intellect, and your heart guide you.
Trust.
Believe in the incredible power of the human mind.
Of doing something that makes a difference.
Of working hard. Of laughing and hoping. Of lazy
afternoons. Of lasting friends. Of all the things that
cross your path this year.
The start of something new brings the hope
of something great.
Anything is possible.
There is only one you.
And you will pass this way only once. Do it right.


The Optimist Creed

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerul countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize
others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit
the presence of trouble.


"An artist's career always begins tomorrow."

- James McNeill Whistler

"The trouble with experience is that by the time
you have it you are too old to take advantage of it."

- Jimmy Connors

"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral
rights."

- J. Paul Getty

"It is their interest on earth, not their stake in eternity,
that makes men cowards."

- Eden Phillpots

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be
and you help them become what they are capable of
becoming."

- Goethe

"To err is human - but it feels divine."

- Mae West

"A child's education should begin at least 100 years
before he was born."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Ours is a world where people don't know what they
want and are willing to go through hell to get it."

- Don Marquis

"The artist has never been a dictator, since he
understands better than anybody else the variations
in the human personality."

- Heywood Brown

""If there was no God, there would be no atheists."

- G.E. Chesterton

"Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans."

- Betty Talmudge

"Anger is really disappointed hope."

- Erica Jong

"If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch."

- Anon

"You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire.
Once the flame begins to catch, the wind just blows it higher."

- Peter Gabriel

"Do not walk behind me. I may not lead. Do not walk in front
of me. I may not follow. Just walk beside me, and be my friend."

- Unknown

"You are never taller than when you are on your knees."

- Rich Hodgson, FC'94

"Don't make any hassle
Don't play like an asshole
If you wanna get paid
Don't make waves."

- Brand X (Phil Collins' band)

"[The drug Ecstasy] now exists to induce pleasant
feelings of emotional security and openness while
dancing to Abba remixes."

- Andrew Sullivan, article in The New Republic, 9/28/92

"It is only with the heart that we see rightly; what is
essential is invisible to the eye."

- The Little Prince

"Whoever posesses the present moment, posesses God.
Therefore, whoever possesses the present moment,
posesses everything.
The present moment is enough.
Do not let anything trouble you."

- St. Theresa of Avila

"There are no Sundays in Brooklyn."

- Noel Aitkins

"You have to die a little to become a true
disciple of Christ."

- Unknown

"You're the second guy today that thinks a
gat in the hand means the world with a tail."

- Philip Marlowe, The Big Sleep

"Simple is better. It's just harder."

- Hemingway

"There's no such thing as an objective stance
when you're a writer."

- Karyn Kay

"Oh fuck it, I'll read the Bible."

- I think it was me

"- You don't have to be a rocket scientist
to be a criminal.

- Yea, but helps to be smarter than the battery."

- Cop & witness conversation about a car battery thief

"This trial is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery
of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."

- Woody Allen, Zelig

"Actually, Captain Flume slept like a log most nights
and merely dreamed he was awake. So convincing were
these dreams of lying awake that when he awoke from
them each morning in complete exhaustion he fell right
back to sleep."

-Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmelade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with Kaleidescope eyes."

- The Beatles

"Shitballs, MaryJane, and I can't dance."

- Ed Kiley

"Do you realize if you didn't have phlegm,
you couldn't speak French?"

- a dumb Sesqui chick ('92)

"I'm an EMT, I know how to give birth - uh,
I mean, deliver a baby..."

- Matt Rosenblatt (FUEMS)

"Sucking all the marrow out of life doesn't mean
choking on the bone. There's a time for daring
and there's a time for caution; a wise man
understands which is called for."

- Dead Poet's Society

"Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to school we go.
With razor blades and hand grenades
Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho."

- Prof. Curran (FC)

"Murder is the ultimate transgression."

- Kay

"Plotting murder is somewhat relaxing...

...'tis the season to be jolly...like it or not...

...It is absolutely perfect there - are you
wallowing-in-Swiss-perfection?...

...I'm going to stay as sober as a shi'ite...

...they can kiss my sweet ass on my couch
of many colors...

...Every year you live in L.A. you lose 2
points of your I.Q....

...It's redundant to die in L.A...."

- excerpts from "Tru", a play about Truman Capote

"We're all guilty in the eyes of God."

- Rabbi Pearlstein, "Broadway Danny Rose"

"Something about pizza stapled to a wall...I don't know...
I was frightened..."

- CC LeBruiser, about a nightmare

"I want a Red-Ryder-Carbine-action-200-shot-range-model-air-rifle."

- Ralphie in "A Christmas Story"

"You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one."

- Lennon

"I live alone within my self
like a hut within the woods
I keep my heart high upon
a shelf, barren of other goods
I need another's arms to reach
for it, and place it where it belongs
I need another's touch and smile
to fill my hut with songs."

- "Sea of Love"

"My life is a country western song,
and you just added another verse."

- "Life Goes On"

"Remember, love thy neighbors, don't eat them."
(in a French accent)

- unknown

"You can't say 'hell' on the radio, you should say
'they beat the stuffing out of them', or 'beat the
bejesus out of them'..."

- D. Cotter to P. Daly

"- It scared the fuck out of me.

- You have 'fuck'?

- No, I lost my fuck.

- Where is your fuck now?

- Last time I saw it it was going through
the washing machine and said, 'oh shit!'

- Fuck you

- Fuck me? You're not going to fuck me.

- Spoon me!

- Eat me!

- Fork you!

- Spread me!

- So you're using me for my orange juice?"

- random conversations in Sesqui between B.&J. Jones, CCLeB, and B Emond

"I AM FUCK!! FUCK OF THE MOUNTAIN!!"

- George Carlin

"Have a happy Kwanzaa!!"
-TV

"There'll come a time when you'll lick a
rock like it's a drumstick from a Thanksgiving
turkey."
- Twilight Zone

"I'm a slob with a sliderule."

- Twilight Zone

"You sit there, spinning your little web,
thinking the whole world revolves around you.
Well, it doesn't, Mr. Potter. In the whole vast
configuration of things you're nothing but a
scurvy little spider!...and that goes for you too!!
...and that goes for you too!!!"

- George Bailey, "It's a Wonderful Life"

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

- anon

"Success is the best deodorant."

- "The January Man"

"Knowledge is wealth and I'm a very rich man."

- "Space Raiders"

"The soul afraid of dying never learns to live."

- "The Rose"

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning...
smells like - victory."

- "Apocalypse Now"

"I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see.
I sought my God, but my God eluded me.
I sought my brother, and I found all three."

- anon

"No kid should be forced to watch their parents
do the hully gully."

- "Roseanne"

"The future isn't what it used to be."

- "Angel Heart"

"It was either divine inspiration or just really
smelly shoes."

- me in a dream

"I'm a coach. I need a sideline."

- Bill Arnsparger, SD Chargers Def. Coord.

"When confronted with a foe: bless her, praise her,
and let her go."

- Carol Burnett

"Flattery is nice, but you still pay the price."

- "Night Court"

"'Homo Sum: humani nil a ma alienum puto' -
'I am a human being: nothing is alien to me'...

...[poetry] lies at the heart of everything fine in
the human experience."

- Maya Angelou

"It's not worth my time or money if I can't
touch it, taste it, eat it and pass it through my
lower intestines..."

- Ross Perot

"Your fears are more debilitating than the actual problem."

- "Family Ties"

"In war, the first casualty is truth."

- Edward R. Murrow

"Press On
Nothing in the world can take the place
of persistence. Talent will not;
Nothing is more common than
unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; Unrewarded genius
is almost a proverb.
Education alone will not; the world is
full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone
are Omnipotent."

"Poetry, according to Frost, is 'what you can't translate."

- unknown

"Whosoever draws nigh to God
one step through doubtings dim,
God will advance a mile
in blazing light to Him."

"When you call upon me
and pray to me, I will hear you.
And when you seek me with all
your heart, you will find me."

- Jeremiah 29:12-13

"You shall find the Lord, your God, if
you seek with all your heart and soul."

- Deut. 4:29

"Your birthplace isn't where you were born,
it's where you find out who you are."

- "Class of '96"

"If you believe in a story enough, you become
a part of it."

- Captain O.G. Readmore

"There is no such thing as an atheist in a combat
situation....

...just do what I say and don't crap on yourself...."

- "Runaway Train"

"I think the guy who runs the Guggenheim is kind of a nut...

...Modern art was always a joke...

...Picasso was a communist...

...Communists treated modern art in the early
20th century like they treated Elvis on the Ed
Sullivan Show - like it was a big joke...

...Los Angeles is...one big eyesore...

...Bad taste was at its height in the 1960's...

...You used to enter Penn Station like a god,
now you enter it like a rat..."

- Dr. Spalding, (FC) art history teacher

"I'll fuck whoever and whenever I want!!"

- CC LeBruiser

"I HAVE CRAMP!!!"
- a joke in bad taste about Nancy who got one of her tubes tied

"Mustard is tempermental."

- Marnie Howser (FC'93)

"I like boxing. It's kind of like ballet.
Except it doesn't have any music, or
choreography, and the dancers hit
each other."

- Jack Handey

"Death is a hermaphrodite??"

- Becca Emond

"-It's the Irish National Disease

- Bad manners?

-Worse...No manners...

-She died an Irish woman's death:
Drinking tea..."

- excerpts from "Da"

"People say I don't know what good clean fun is.
You know, I DON'T know what good it is!!"

- "Laugh In"

"Mary Mec-Bec..."

- who knows?

"History is only written by the winners."

- unknown

"The children want to remember what the parents
want to forget....

...you can't have culture without leisure..."

- Rabbi Perman (FC)

"The proof of a poem is not that we have
never forgotten it, but we know at first
sight we never could forget it."

- Robert Frost

"Seems I'm not alone in being alone."

- The Police, "Message in a Bottle"

"I thought all writers drank to excess and beat
their wives..."

- Cary Grant in "Philadelphia Story"

"What's the fun of being a teenager if you can't
dress weird?"

-"Peggy Sue Got Married"

"Men speak conveniently of love when it suits their
purpose."

- "Robin Hood: Prince of Theives"

"You're about as romantic as a pair of handcuffs."

- "The Big Heat"

"We do not play because we are children,
we are children so we can play."

- Marty Stouffer, "Wild America"

"As we say down at the Post Office: here's
looking up your address!!"

- Cliff, "Cheers"

"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

- Norma Desmond, "Sunset Boulevard"

"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures."

- Jessamyn West

"You're sort of in the middle of East Nowhere...

...Providence, R.I. is the armpit of America...

...I'm up to my armpits in alligators!!..."

- Janine Mudge (my NYNEX boss)

"Good writing is slavery."

- David Ogilvie, Ad mogul

"My emotion paralyzes me, and sometimes,
methinks, it plans my murder...

...I now know what I love; and when tears
well in my eyes, and my heart begins to
swell, I can say: 'this is my life'...

The piles of steel and cinder tracks;
the prison of urbanity is like being
swallowed up by the tiger.
Non-descript verse spit upon the
sides, the walls, the boundaries.
The sweat drips off my brow onto
the eerie odor of melted flesh and
seering defects.

Love, no more than a tune,
whispers in my ear. It is an
ethereal transport, from out the
sinking seas of blood. But it is
love and pride - wanting for nothing
but to be somewhere else. Trudge,
do I, for color and fame, blindly,
telling, and fanciful. Tickled when
the violin plays, I am returned to
the vernerable state
of my train.

Yes, sir, I must travel far and far,
from here and from myself.
I am living, breathing, yet all my dreams
are not.
They long and wont, struggle and laze.
They are virile, yet dormant from any exit.

Oh how sad, how pained I feel.
Grasping, yet my tips fall short of
the prize, the smile I will never raise
again. Lord! Lord! will you smother me?
Will you take me up and shoot me like
a star? I need a hand of heart and reason,
to raise this blackened soul - then,
to triumph. So the steel will no longer
pain my sight."

- me

"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more
Men were deceivers, ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore
to one thing, constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go
and be you blithe and bonny
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny nonny."

-Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"

"Children are a great way to start people."

- Meghan O'Brien (FC'94)

"The enemy is the most threatening when it
is invisible."

- Hitchcock

"Nice customs curtsy to great Kings."

- "Henry V" Shakespeare

"Don't count your chickens before they're chickens."

- JJ's Aunt Peggy

We Saw a Vision

In the darkness of despair, we saw a vision
We lit the light of hope
And it was not extinguished
In the desert of discouragement, we saw a vision
We planted a tree of valour
And it blossomed.

In the winter of bondage, we saw a vision
We melted the snow of lethargy
And the river of resurrection flowed from it.
We sent our vision aswim like a swan on a river
The vision became a reality
Winter became summer
Bondage became freedom
And this we left to you as your inheritance.

O generations of freedom
Remember us
the generations of the vision.

- from the Gardens of Remembrance in Dublin, IRE, from the people's rev. for the
freedom of the Republic

"So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer
nature is wasting away, our inner nature is
being renewed day by day. For this slight
momentary affliction preparing us for an
external weight if glory beyond all measure,
because we look not at what can be seen but at
what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is
temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal."

- 2 Corinthians, 4:16-18

"Many are called, but few are chosen...

...Art is triumphant when it can use convention
as an instrument of its own purpose....

...you can experience God as surely as you can
experience joy or pain."

- Somerset Maugham

"People don't change, only the degree of living changes...

...Everyone has to be invented from time to time...

...there's nothing funny about jokes, George...

...Your sight will improve as your heart grows...

...being on television is like speaking to a slow horse...

...the beauty is in the walking. We are betrayed by destinations....

...All writers are liars. How else could we hope to
caress the truth?...

...Silence is the only true sanity...

...I would regard suicide as an extreme form of
self-censorship...

...Anyone who tries to revive a dead language
that died peacefully and painlessly should be
found guilty of high treason...

...Blessed are the stupid. They give me something
to write about..."

- Gwynn Thomas

"Idolatry is a disservice to any great writer..."

- Philip Wayne

"It's not that age brings childhood back again;
age merely shows what children we remain."

- Goethe, Faust

"As my grandmother used to say: 'K.P.B.' -
'keep the bull in the pasture'."

- Fr. Matthews, S.J. (FC)

"All theory, my friend, is grey,
But green is life's glad golden tree."

- Faust

"Those who forget about the past are bound
to repeat it."

- old saying

"Adaptability is the key to survival."

-unknown

"You have a 4.0, I'm sure you can figure
out how to make instant potatoes..."

- JJ's suitemate to Cindy Oest (FC'94)

"...when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering you to tell you anymore, that's a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care."

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

"It's not about how to achieve your dreams; it's about how to lead your life. if you lead your life the right way, the dreams will come to you."

"This advice is good for the ladies: when it comes to men that are romantically interested in you, it's really simple: just don't listen to anything they have to say; pay attention to what they do"

"How do you get people to help you? By telling the truth. Being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term."

"Find the best in everybody. You might have to wait a long time, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting, it will come out. And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity."

- from The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch

"When something is wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action."

- National Treasure

"Difficult times lie ahead. Soon we all must face the choice between what is right, and what is easy."

- Dumbledore, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling

"Praying is like a rocking chair. It'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere." -- Gypsy Rose Lee

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." -- Eliel Saarinen

"...children are born to replace their parents. For children to reach their full potential, their parents have to die." - Leoben, Battlestar Galactica 2K

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so. " - Hamlet, Shakespeare

"I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead." - King Lear, Shakespeare

"My doctor says I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber and that I am therefore excused from saving the universe"
- Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

"Alchohol doesnt solve any problems, but then again neither does milk."
-Unknown

"Until we lose ourselves, there is no hope in finding ourselves."
- Henry Miller

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there 's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect."

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'"

- Henry V, Shakespeare

If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

- Henry V, Shakespeare

"Betrayal has such a powerful grip on the mind. It's almost like a python. It can squeeze out all other thought. Suffocate all other emotion until everything is dead except for the rage. I'm not talking about anger. I'm talking about rage." - Adama, BSG

"It's hard to find the moral high ground when we're all standing in the mud."
--Phelan (bad guy), BSG

"It's naïve to think that horrible things that we can't understand have simple explanations. Because simple explanations make us feel like we have control when we don't." - President Roslin, BSG

"To marriage. Why we build bars."
-- a toast by Chief Tyrol, BSG

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
-- Adama, BSG

"I think all of us have had teachers who have made a profound impact on our lives. History is full of examples of leaders who have come from the most humble beginnings, and have risen to meet the challenge posed by cataclysmic events. It's very easy to be sitting there in your armchairs ... who's never shouldered any real responsibility in your life." - Baltar, BSG

"...You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore." - Adama, BSG

"This isn't dueling pistols at dawn, this is war. You never wanna fight fair. You wanna sneak up behind your enemy, and club 'em over the head." - Starbuck, BSG

"Throughout history the nexus between man and machine has spun some of the most dramatic, compelling and entertaining fiction.
--The Hybrid, BSG

"Commander William Adama: Politics. As exciting as war. Definitely as dangerous.
President Roslin: Though in war, you can only get killed once. In politics it can happen over and over. " - BSG

"In the fight to protect our future, we must confront our past, the lies we've told, the decisions we'd made, the people we have loved. As the struggle for survival continues, we can't face our enemy until we face ourselves."
--Colonel Tigh, BSG

"If you keep running from a schoolyard bully, he keeps on chasing you but the moment you turn around and stop and you punch him really hard in a sensitive spot, he'll think twice about coming back again."
-- Adama BSG

"So what's your plan? Personally, I tend to go with what you know. 'Til something better turns up."
-- Adama, BSG

"Captain Lee Adama: So what's the charge this time?
Lt. Kara Thrace: Striking a superior asshole."
--BSG

"Adama: You're not listening.
Baltar: I don't have to listen. I'm the president" - BSG

"Chief Tyrol: What do we do now, Cap'n"
Starbuck: The same thing we always do. Fight 'em until we can't." - BSG

"Symbols matter...they're like pieces of your soul you can look at." - Helo, BSG

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love."
- Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"You can live with dignity, you can't die with it." - House, M.D.

It is necessary to be drunk all the time...so as not to feel the horrible burden of time breaking your back... But on what? On wine, poetry, or virtue, it is up to you.
- Baudelaire

You should accept personality for what it is. You shouldn't regret that a poet is a drunk, instead, you should regret that drunks are not always poets.
- Oscar Wilde

To alcohol! ...the cause of, and the solution to, ALL of life's problems.
- Homer Simpson

We only die once. And for such a long time
- Moliere

See what's invisible and you'll see what to write
- from "Long Song for Bobby Long"

It is necessary to be drunk all the time...so as not to feel the horrible burden of time breaking your back... But on what? On wine, poetry, or virtue, it is up to you.
- Baudelaire

You should accept personality for what it is. You shouldn't regret that a poet is a drunk, instead, you should regret that drunks are not always poets.
- Oscar Wilde

To alcohol! ...the cause of, and the solution to, ALL of life's problems.
- Jason Klinger

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

I am a sysadmin. If you see me running, save your work.
-- unknown

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
--William Ernest Henley