Not the ones that make you laugh, but the ones that are just so damn cool they're irresistable.
In the great romances written, sung or performed on stage, the long-denied lovers seldom began their future together by declaring Hey, lets give it a shot. It might be fun.
-Intrigues of a Princess, by Aerika S
Word. That's the path to true love in a nutshell.
Ja, -n
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"
More Wyld Hunts than even I care to admit have ended badly when the newly-exalted child picks up, oh, I dunno, a shovel, declares "I am the Invincible Spear Princess", and proceeds to kill everyone. It's terribly humiliating when your own nephew is decapitated by a prancing thirteen year old with a garden implement.
- Mnemon Explains, by Kasumi
Jadeite groaned deeply and rested his head in his hands. This is not happening, he moaned. I am not involved in any of this. My own, personal, HAND-PICKED assassin was not beaten by two Sailor brats and one little punk kid! Reaching over, he grabbed Nise Suikos shirt and hoisted him into the air. Tell me this isnt happening!
- Ronin Summer, by Morgan (not Convergence, the originial)
He hadn't believed a word Hammond said at first of course, I mean, demons, chosen ones, interdimensional holes somehow not being the same thing as alternate realities. It all sounded so unbelievable.
Then he said SG-1' and it all became just another day at the office.
- Emperor Xander
Nabiki raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of tea. So, wait, you actually use logical reasoning to weigh emotional factors against your conscience when making a purely ethical decision?
Not entirely, Ranma responded, theres also apathy to consider.
Ataru nodded seriously. To say nothing of any potential personal gain that may be involved.
- Takahasi SoupD for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Quote:
More Wyld Hunts than even I care to admit have ended badly when the newly-exalted child picks up, oh, I dunno, a shovel, declares "I am the Invincible Spear Princess", and proceeds to kill everyone. It's terribly humiliating when your own nephew is decapitated by a prancing thirteen year old with a garden implement.
- Mnemon Explains, by Kasumi
Yeah Kasumi rocks.
![[Image: happy.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/happy.gif)
_______________________________
We are the swords in the darkness, the watchers on the walls. The fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn.
The horn that wakes the sleepers. The shield that guards the realms of men. -The Brothers Black
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.
Oh come on! I've plunged down from orbit on wings of fire... So don't even think you can scare me!
Benjamin Prester- A Miracle of Science by Jon Kilgannon and Mark Sachs.---------------
-Jon
Being the Mariner hitting coach is like being the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts.
-Poster on USSMariner.com
---
Jon
"And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"
- One person's unbelivable, is another's day at the office
Not sure where I heard that one. I suspect it's more of a common concept.
It certianly applies to the vast majority of the people in fics...
'...Gee, all the evils of the netherworld are about to consume me. Must be a Tuesday - no wait, Wendesday... Tuesday's kidnapping...'
"Why didn't you WARN me?"
"We knew you'd be to modest to volunteer."
"Modest, hell! You just figured I'd be easier to nail if I wasn't a moving target!"
"Ethan of Athos," Lois McMaster Bujold.
-----------------------------------------------------
"We are who we choose to be."
Another Bujold novel, but I can't recall which one.
----------------------------------------------------
"Oh, was that drink you gave him a stimulant? I couldn't tell."
"...you mean he's like that ALL THE TIME?!?"
and later:
"No one knows their limits until they've gone beyond them."
"...*you* would think that, wouldn't you?"
"The Warrior's Apprentice," LMB again.
----------------------------------------------------
"Trapped in a basement on Jackson's Whole with a sex-starved teenage werewolf. There was never anything about this in any of my Academy training manuals..."
"Labyrinth," collected in "Borders of Infinity" by LMB
-----------------------------------------------------
"In the marketplace of ideas, it is not the government's job to put a thumb on the scales."
Picked up on USENET.
-----------------------------------------------------
"This is my lover, the king of France."
"Oh? Well, I'm the Lord of Time."
Dr Who, "The Girl in the Fireplace."
-----------------------------------------------------
"Don't you just love how casual a demo man can be with a roll of duct tape?"
Schlock Mercenary
-----------------------------------------------------
"...and if I EVER catch you giving away the donation gifts without *getting* a donation again, I will turn you upside down, plant my feet firmly in your armpits, and use you as a pogo stick!"
Susan Ivanova, during a Station Pledge Drive (PBS-style) in a piece of B5 fanfic that should still be on my hard drive *somewhere*....
-------------------------------------------------------
"The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present, and
prisms reflecting all possible futures. Books are ighthouses on the dark sea of Time."
- Jeffrey Robbins, in the "Gargoyles" episode "A Lighthouse on the Sea of Time"
-----------------------------------------------------------
"An' then Chicken@little.com, he come scramblin outta the terminal room screaming "The system's crashing! The system's crashing!"
        -Uncle RAMus, 'Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children'
------------------------------------------------------------
You want to be a hero, with the axe about to fall
You'd buy it for the love and glory, for it all.
You want to dress in black and lose your heart beyond recall
Hunt a dream through rain and thunder, on your honor, for it all.
-Verse from "For it All," featured in the novel "War for the Oaks" by Emma Bull, and on the final Cats Laughing album "Another Way to Travel."
-------------------------------------------------------------
"The light at the end of the tunnel is muzzle flash."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Are all of Bujold's books full of funny tidbits like that? If so, then I definitely need to see about picking a few up.
Black Aeronaut Technologies Group, LLC
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News
of this kind a danish requires."
Raziel: So it's true... what Kain and Vorador told me. I am some kind of unholy vampire messiah.
Janos: Unholy? No... Messiah? Perhaps.
Raziel: I don't like that word... it smells of martyrdom.
-Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver II
Connor: We haven't really got a system of deciding who, Roc. It's just...
Rocco: Me! *Me*! I'm the guy! I know everyone! Their habits, who they hang out with, who they talk to! I've got phone numbers, addresses! I know who they're fucking! I know where they *live*! We could kill *everyone.*
Murphy: So what do you think?
Connor: I'm strangely comfortable with it.
-Boondock Saints
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
Quote:
Are all of Bujold's books full of funny tidbits like that? If so, then I definitely need to see about picking a few up.
Oh, Chaos, she's got quite a few that're even
better. For example:
"Your forward momentum is going to lead all your followers over a cliff someday.... On the way down, you'll convince 'em all they can fly.... Lead on, my lord. I'm flapping as hard as I can."
--
The Warrior's Apprentice
"Do you consider yourself an innocent bystander?"
"God knows I try to be."
--
Memory
Inspiring lines, too:
"Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."
--
Memory
(That one about being who you choose to be appears in
Memory, by the way. It
might also be in another book.)
(After disinterring an infant, to confirm that she'd been murdered):
"Peace to you, small lady, after our rude invasions. I will give you a better sacrifice, I swear.... And the smoke of that burning will rise and be seen from one end of these mountains to the other."
-- "The Mountains of Mourning" in
Borders of Infinity
-----
Big Brother is watching
you. And
damn, you are so bloody
BORING.
Yeah, definitely gotta get some of her books then.
Black Aeronaut Technologies Group, LLC
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News
of this kind a danish requires."
Her two main series seem to be the Vorkosigan novels (there's a *lot* of them. They're quite good. There's enough value to the overarching plot that it's worth spending some effort to read early ones before later ones.) and a new series that I know of only three books to (Curse of Chalion is the first, Paladin of Souls the second.) that is *also* very good, and also worth reading in order.
Yeah, Bujold's got a lot like that.
"Reputation is what others know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
From "Memory," IIRC.
=-=------------------------------------
And from today's Freefall webcomic:
"There's just something relaxing about walking through well-maintained infrastructure."
"Having lived on a space station, I know exactly what you mean."
"Goddess, the world of men is a world of incomprehension," [Master Li] said softly. "Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith, which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it ... We thank you for hoping that the one tiny talent of man might achieve what other forces could not ..." -- The Story of the Stone, by Barry Hughart.
>You want to be a hero, with the axe about to fall
>You'd buy it for the love and glory, for it all.
>You want to dress in black and lose your heart beyond recall
>Hunt a dream through rain and thunder, on your honor, for it >all.
>-Verse from "For it All," featured in the novel "War for the >Oaks" by Emma Bull, and on the final Cats Laughing album >"Another Way to Travel."
-Final- album? I was under the impression that there was only the one. Got any information about the other(s)?
-z
Quote:
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.
-- Terry Pratchett, "Hogfather"
-- Acyl
"In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it"
Erwin Rommel
__________________
Into terror!, Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell
>>-Verse from "For it All," featured in the novel "War for the >Oaks" by Emma Bull, and on the final Cats Laughing album >"Another Way to Travel."
>-Final- album? I was under the impression that there was only the one. Got any information about the other(s)?
There was one other.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_Laughing
"If it's stupid, but it works, it isn't stupid."
Murphy's rules of combat
It's not the bullet with your name on it you have to watch out for. It's the hundred thousand-some-odd labelled "occupant".
likewise
A couple more of Murphy's Laws of Combat:
- Friendly fire isn't.
- If the enemy is within range, so are you.
"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it." - G'Kar (Babylon 5)
"What kind of idiot do you take me for?" "Dunno, how many kinds are there?" - Disney's The Gummi Bears
"Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel. But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be." - Angel
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin and Hobbes__________________
We are not ninjas, we are a hedge. Please move along.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
"What's the point of being grown up if you can't be childish now and then?" -- The Doctor (#4)
"Somewhere out there, the sky is burning. The sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. Somewhere there's danger. Somewhere there's excitement. Somewhere else, the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do." -- The Doctor (#7 - last words spoken on the broadcast show's original run)--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
www.baen.com/library/1011...250002.htm
Mountains of Mourning, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Early Vorkosigan story.
The Baen Free Library is your friend.
WARNING: Chapter 2 is a timeline of the Vorkosigan series that is pretty spoilery in a big-picture sort of way.
Also, from Wizard's Bane, by Rich Cook (same site).
------
Moira laid her hand on his. "But either way, Sparrow," she said gravely, "if you are given a choice between the worst death you can imagine and falling alive into the hands of the League, do everything in your power to die."
------
I still like Tamora Pierce's books years after I read them and the Protector of the Small series is one of my favorites.
From First Test
Quote:
"What do they think their mothers do, when the lords are at war and a raiding party strikes? Stay in their solars and tat lace?"
That made Kel smile. "My aunt lit barrels of lard and had them catapulted onto Scanran ships this summer."
"As would any delicately reared noblewoman."
Quote:
"I am impressed, young lady," he told her with a wry smile. "You have been royally pounded."
Kel smiled at him. "You should see the other fellows."
"There!" cried Neal, holding up his hands. "You see what I have to deal with!"
"You may have noticed my son has an endless capacity for drama," Baird told Kel.
She couldn't help it: she grinned.
Quote:
Thirteen sparrows, the entire courtyard flock, stood on the coverlet. Crown hopped up the distance from Kel's navel to somewhere below her chin, where Kel lost sight of her. She closed her eyes, waiting for the gentle peep. Instead the quick gait that circled her cheek stopped beside her ear. "PEEP!"
Quote:
"But this custom leads to worse things. Cleon sends me for papers, but someone else traps a first-year in a corner and keeps making him do stupid tasks. He'll maybe hit the first-year to smarten him when the first-year slows down and that is dead wrong. If we take this as pages, what about when we are knights? Do we say, Oh, now I'm going to be nice to the weak and the small? Or do we do as we learned when we were pages?"
From Page:
Quote:
That's what living with the Yamanis does to people. They get so well-mannered they won't mention you're crazy.
Quote:
"I'd like to be perfect," Kel said plaintively as they followed their friends. "It would be nice."
"And so daunting for the rest of us, trust me," Neal assured her.
Quote:
"Where did you learn all that?" Owen breathed, his eyes wide.
"Some I learned at the Yamani court," Kel replied calmly, gulping down a cup of water. "Some Eda Bell taught me this summer."
"I'm going to treat you with the reverence I reserve for the Crown Jewels," Roald assured her, his eyes crinkled with mirth.
And from Green Glow over at TTH, Anya... not:
Quote:
Deciding to be helpful, Anya added, We can both speak Norse and do the dance of Capitalist Superiority and do magic.
--
![[Image: nanohafh1.jpg]](http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/6227/nanohafh1.jpg)
From "The Phoenix and the Sword" by Robert E. Howard:
Quote:
"Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars: Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom in the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."
From "'The Night Is Fine,' the Walrus Said" by John Barnes:
Quote:
"Prophets never say anything new. There's nothing in Ix's teachings that you won't find in Buddha or Moses. We always already know: Treat other people kindly because kindness matters even when it is not returned. Courage matters even if you lose. Don't dwell on the pleasures of things that you feel it is wrong to do. Try to live your days as if you were grateful for them. Love your neighbor, and keep your definition of 'neighbor' broad.
Everything the human race knows about living well and living together fits onto a few sheets of paper in big type. One prophet after another tells us the same thing. The hard part isn't to think of it, which has already been done, or to understand it, which any child can do, but to do it."
Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
Quote:
In Life's name and for Life's sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so -- till the Universe's end.
--The Wizard's Oath, asstd. Diane Duane novels
Quote:
It fell down, a great disastrous fall like a lightning-stricken tower's, and wept darkness with desire for the light.
--Duane,
High Wizardry
--Sam
"Is this a warm moment or should we be disturbed?"
In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy [them] when I find them, and on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever ... Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.
-- The Guns of Avalon, Roger Zelazny
A measure of how fond I am of that one is that I typed it in from memory and then got the book and made a very few minor corrections. Back when I was still playing AD&D, one of my favorite characters had more or less adopted this as his motto.
-----
Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.