I love quotations. I read a lot, and when I find a phrase I like, I write it down in a notebook. I now have quite a few pages of these, enough to make an interesting web page, I think, so prepare yourselves for amusing profundity.
Before I begin, I must note that there is a Pratchett Quote File on L-Space, where all manner of entertaining Pratchett quotations may be found; however, I shall still include the quotations which I find particularly noteworthy.
These are in absolutely no order except that in which I found them and wrote them down. Thus, indirectly, this is a log of my reading material for approximately the last year, since the beginning of 1999. Not all of the quotations are from written sources; some of them were said by my friends, and some are from songs. Not all of them are funny, and not all of them are profound, though some are both. Remember to turn your irony detector on, and enjoy.
She decided, without ever deciding, that
she would continue travelling by night. It was too important a matter,
this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.
Robin McKinley, Deerskin
I've always thought that one of the major
problems of being a king is the risk of your daughter getting a prick.
Terry Pratchett, Guards!
Guards!
"Well, ---- me," [the thief] said.
"A ----ing wizard. I hate ----ing wizards!"
"You shouldn't ---- them, then," muttered
one of his henchmen.
Terry Pratchett, Mort
As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice
shrieked, "When shall we three meet again?"
... Another voice said, "Well, I can
do next Tuesday."
Terry Pratchett, Wyrd
Sisters
"Oh, obvious," said Granny. "I'll
grant you it's obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious
doesn't mean they're true."
Terry Pratchett,
Wyrd
Sisters
If this man had not twelve thousand a
year, he would be a very stupid fellow.
Jane Austen, Mansfield
Park
The patient, good Odysseus considered
carefully whether he should fell him with a mortal blow or knock him to
the ground with a gentler punch.
Homer, The Odyssey
The trouble with you, Ibid, is that you
think you're the biggest bloody authority on everything.
Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
Sex without love is a meaningless experience,
but as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good.
Woody Allen
I'm just wondering why I feel so all alone
Why I'm a stranger in my own life
Sheryl Crow, "Every Day
Is a Winding Road"
If you are squeamish
don't prod the
beach rubble
Sappho
The best way to overcome awkward social
situations is to put your hand in somebody's pants.
Anonymous (a friend of
an acquaintance)
What a sense of possession, of confidence,
it gave one to have pockets, to shove one's fists into them, as if in simply
owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.
Anita Desai, Clear Light
of Day
But we were dragons. We were supposed
to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can
tell you, you ape -- we never burned and tortured and ripped each other
apart and called it morality.
Terry Pratchett, Guards!
Guards!
I love deadlines. I especially like
the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
Have a nice day.
Anonymous
Rose: Men are nothing but heartbreak and
sorrow.
Hyacinth: I know. I can never get
Richard to fold his pajamas.
Keeping Up Appearances
From these Christians who came to [Avalon]
to escape the bigotry of their own kind I learned something, at last, of
the Nazarene, the carpenter's son who had attained Godhead in his own life
and preached a rule of tolerance; and so I came to see that my quarrel
was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who
mistook their own narrowness for his.
Marion Zimmer Bradley,
The
Mists of Avalon
That man is blessed who has a good friend,
a good wife, and a good sword.
Marion Zimmer Bradley,
The
Mists of Avalon
John Milton's publishers didn't sell Satan
underwear as part of the book promotion.
Nancy Churnin
Provided that nothing like useful knowledge
could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection,
she had never any objection to books at all.
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
The preson, be it gentleman or lady, who
has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
"That little boys and girls should be
tormented," said Henry, "is what no one at all acquainted with human nature
in a civilised state can deny."
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
A woman especially, if she have the misfortune
of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
Miss Morland, no one can think more highly
of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has
given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than
half.
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
Your mind is warped by an innate principle
of general integrity, and therefore not accessible to the cool reasonings
of family partiality, or a desire for revenge.
Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey
There were times when you had to look
wobbly facts in the face.
Terry Pratchett, The
Last Continent
It's a ship, even if it is a giant
pumpkin, and it looks as though there's room for all of us. Even
if it is a bit of a squash.
Terry Pratchett, The
Last Continent
Americans admire success. Englishmen
admire heroic failure.
Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris
I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies
being always approachable.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
She had been forced into prudence in her
youth, she learned romance as she grew older -- the natural sequel of an
unnatural beginning.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence
which only numbers [of people] could give.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
It is the misfortune of poetry, to be
seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
She might have been absolutely rich and
perfectly healthy, and yet be happy.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
A house without a cat, and a well-fed,
well-petted, and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house perhaps,
but how can it prove its title?
Mark Twain
Laura: Oh, I thought you had got everything
working.
Dad: "Everything" is a moving target.
My dad and myself, June
1999
Girls do what their mothers tell them
to do. Ladies do what society tells them to do. Women decide
for themselves.
Karen Kijewski
In such cases as these, a good memory
is unpardonable.
Jane Austen, Pride and
Prejudice
"Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you
are now using me unkindly. You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason,
and to convince me against my will."
Jane Austen, Sense and
Sensibility
I'm sorry, I thought you wanted the truth.
Perhaps you were expecting jelly and ice cream?
Terry Pratchett, Carpe
Jugulum
Turning men into pigs is no particular
feat. The real exercise is getting pigs to write checks.
Gregory Frost, "The Root
of the Matter"
All [people] are intolerant....
Only they're intolerant of different things.
Joan D. Vinge, The Snow
Queen
Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine
you'd fall so high.
Joan D. Vinge, The Snow
Queen
Indifference is the strongest force in
the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless.
Joan D. Vinge, The Snow
Queen
It's really hard to be roommates with
people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
J. D. Salinger, The
Catcher in the Rye
He was very intelligent and all, but you
could tell he didn't have too much brains.
J. D. Salinger, The
Catcher in the Rye
What a refreshing mind you have, young
man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
I have always felt that violence was the
last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of
the terminally inept.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
You must never imagine that just because
something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not also dangerous.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
"I may still be hung over," sighed Richard.
"That almost made sense."
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
I know there may be many Estonians married
to Swedes who are listening to this program.
Radio announcer in Alberta,
Canada
If you put your hand in and you get brain
freeze, then you know it's cold.
Anonymous tourist at Lake
Louise, Alberta, Canada
Pope reveals shocking truth: Heaven is
not the Paradise you think it is!
Headline of The Sun,
August 15, 1999
Love is an obsolete emotion, ranking in
usefulness somewhere between earwigs and toe mold.
Patricia A. McKillip, "The
Snow Queen"
Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look
so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,
Frankenstein
Life is not determined by consciousness,
but consciousness by life.
Karl Marx, The German
Ideology
Most people these days have very expensive
brains that they have spent a lifetime filling with informaiton, not to
speak of decades of developing a personality loved by friends and family.
Protect this investment!
Nancy S. Loving, DVM, Go
the Distance: The Complete Resource for Endurance Horses
Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters
he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over
eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.
Karl Marx, Preface to the
First German Edition of Capital, Volume One
The living is merely a type of what is
dead, and a very rare type.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Happiness is two equations and two unknowns.
Margaret Trias
Sorry I'm late. I've been building
a yurt all morning.
Hilja Terry
Those who are happy tend to have people
who make them feel good, not goods to make them feel like people.
Kevin Golding
At first sight, one does not see what
relations there can be between religion and logic.
Emile Durkheim, The
Division of Labor in Society
Time is, of all modes of existence, most
obsequious to the imagination.
Samuel Johnson, "Preface
to Shakespeare"
Laura: My sweater has a hole in the elbow.
Maggie: Darn it.
My friend Maggie and myself,
November, 1999
I use the words you taught me. If
they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be
silent.
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Get out of here and love one another!
Lick your neighbor as yourself!
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Moment upon moment, pattering down, like
the millet grains of...
...that old Greek, and all life long
you wait for that to mount up to a life.
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Nothing is worthy of man as man unless
he can pursue it with passionate devotion.
Max Weber, "Science as
a Vocation"
...Yet he failed somehow, in spite of
a mediocrity that should have insured any man a success.
William Makepeace Thackeray,
Vanity
Fair
A historian may be an artist too, and
a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of
human experience.
Joseph Conrad
One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies
-- but not before they have been hanged.
Heine, Gedanken und
Einfälle
Just because something is a metaphor doesn't
mean it can't be real.
Terry Pratchett, Reaper
Man
But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed
to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved
until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may
all Poetry go to the deuce, and every school teacher perish miserably!
William Makepeace Thackeray,
Vanity
Fair
I can't remember where I put the bed!
I ain't moved it since '71
I got a real funny feeling I'm about
to fall down
I hope I find my way to the ground
I'd hate to spend the whole night floating
around
In the condition I'm in
Moxy Früvous, "Ash
Hash"
Not knowing everything is all that makes
it okay, sometimes.
Neil Gaiman, Sandman Library:
Brief
Lives
It has always been the prerogative of
children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
But the half-wit reains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
Neil Gaiman, Sandman Library:
The
Kindly Ones
I would feel infinitely more comfortable
in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than
one of a number of sugggested options.
Neil Gaiman, Sandman Library:
The
Kindly Ones
"What a wonderful place!"
"Yeah. It was a friend of mine."
Neil Gaiman, Sandman Library:
The
Doll's House
A cat, I realize, cannot be everyone's
cup of fur.
Joseph Epstein
It's hard to look too grand when you're
led by someone who looks like a pudding with legs.
Robin McKinley, The
Outlaws of Sherwood