This is going to be cliché, but I've always found the opening lines to Linkin Park's song New Divide to be suitably vague to fit to a lot of things:

"I remember black skies
The lightning all around me
I remembered each flash
As time began to blur
Like a startling sign
That fate had finally found me
And your voice was all I heard
That I get what I deserve"

With winter approaching, thinking about songs puts me in mind of this verse from one of my favorite bands, which contains one of my favorite metaphors of all time:



Which then puts me in mind of this quote from Rupert Brooke, which then puts me very much in mind of Gale:

I'll have to submit what I consider to be one of the greatest lines in the English language:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, 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?
-Hamlet

^u^
I'm glad I've gotten people outside our usual M:EMbers posting here. And really, I'm actually a little surprised that there hasn't been more Shakespeare quoted. Thanks.

Time to get into literally the entire reason I started this thread: Flightless Fury. I'll go slow.


This is written from the perspective of a large and powerful Dragon. This is awesome. Raven might recognize the quote from when I shared it with him over the summer months -- I feel obligated in advance to tell everyone that this is a fanfiction from the My Little Pony community, but this is one of those rare gems which is both completely accessible to anyone not in the fandom, and something which seems so tangentially related to ponies that it really shouldn't matter if someone has an aversion to ponies to get into this work in particular.

The full story (1,049 words, first-person perspective from the dragon's POV) can be found here:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/162697/ ... ry/purpose

A dramatic reading has been done, with a really good, deep voice used for the dragon's narration. The video is 13 minutes long but the actual reading is only around 10 minutes, with some words from the channel host at the end (she normally does the readings but got some help for this one.:


A fan-made heavy metal-type song which uses some of the deep voice from the dramatic reading:

I kind of completely forgot to post this line, which I apparently wrote down around the same time that I made this thread:

"It'd be so much easier if you became God. I think it'd be a lot easier than being a human."
~ Lain, to Lain
- Serial Experiments Lain, episode 13

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.” - Midnight Tides

“One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.” - House of Chains

“Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity - the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us.
But if that is too dire , let's call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom.” - Toll the Hounds

“Karsa reached down, gathered the skeletal figure into his arms, and then settled back. ‘I stepped over corpses on the way here,’ the Toblakai said. ‘People no one cared about, dying alone. In my barbaric village this would never happen, but here in this city, this civilized jewel, it happens all the time. (...) What is your name?’
‘Munug.’
‘Munug. This night – before I must rise and walk into the temple – I am a village. And you are here, in my arms. You will not die uncared for.’
‘You – you would do this for me? A stranger?’
‘In my village no one is a stranger – and this is what civilization has turned its back on. One day, Munug, I will make a world of villages, and the age of cities will be over. And slavery will be dead, and there shall be no chains – tell your god. Tonight, I am his knight.’
Munug’s shivering was fading. The old man smiled. ‘He knows.’
It wasn’t too much, to take a frail figure into one’s arms for those last moments of life. Better than a cot, or even a bed in a room filled with loved ones. Better, too, than an empty street in the cold rain. To die in someone’s arms – could there be anything more forgiving?
Every savage barbarian in the world knew the truth of this.” - The Crippled God

“The heavy infantry stood. The heavy infantry held the trench. Even as they died, they backed not a single step. The Nah’ruk clawed for purchase on the blood-soaked mud of the berm. Iron chewed into them. Halberds slammed down, rebounded from shields. Reptilian bodies reeled back, blocking the advance of rear ranks. Arrows and quarrels poured into the foe from positions behind the trench.
And from above, Locqui Wyval descended by the score, in a frenzy, to tear and rend the helmed heads of the lizard warriors. Others quickly closed to do battle with their kin, and the sky rained blood.” - Dust of Dreams

Those are all really good, but I feel that this quote:

Has a story that's already been told. It makes me interested in the book itself, even though I know nothing about it. So, great work unearthing these, I guess. d('u'd)

*copy/pastes from IMDB*

- In Time

“Well than try giving it some thought, why don’t you? Apply that finely tutored mind of yours to all those **** hero-with-a-high-destiny legends you people are so **** fond of telling one another. You really think, in a mudball slaughterhouse of a world like this, where war and privation harden whole populations to inhuman brutality and ignorance, where the ruling classes dedicate their sons to learning the science of killing men the way they consign their daughters to breeding till they crack--you really think the gods of a world like that have got no better thing to do with their time than take some random piece of lowborn trash and spend long years carving him into shape for a cat’s-paw?” - The Cold Commands

"Be welcome at my hearth, then, Ringil Eskiath. Hjel gestures toward the fire, some of his earlier elegant poise regained in the motion. I place us both in bonds of guest and host.

Then he jerks a thumb back over his shoulder, artfully casual, as if it's an afterthought.

But your friends back there stay out in the dark.

Ringil doesn't look back. If Hjel the Scavenger Prince and Sorcerer can play this game, so can he. But as the new chill walks its way up his spine, he knows beyond doubt what he'll see if he does turn. He knows because he's seen it before, falling off the feverish edge of consciousness as he lay on the cobbled streets of Hinerion and heard the screams of Venj's men dying.

A gaunt figure, a scarred face, a sword blade swinging like a scythe.

A blunt, powerful form, fists gripped around a heavy smith's hammer and long handled manacle cutters.

A young boy, mouth open, snarling through bloodied teeth, a quarrel sprouting from under his sternum like some alien iron appendage.

They stand at his back in the cold-he can feel them there now-like new gods. Like a fresh pantheon, awaiting to be born." - The Cold Commands

"O! it is excellent. To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous. To use it like a giant."
-Billy Shakespeare

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." - A Thousand Sons (Graham McNeill)

"If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy."

"The day will not save them. And we own the night." - Adeptus Titanicus

"Though my guards may sleep and ships may rest at anchor, our foes know full well that big guns never tire."

"You know, Captain, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful. If you just take the time to look at it." - Lt. Ray Makonnen, The Phantom Planet

Too splendid a blooming cherry tires its audience.
At first sight, the cherry's beauty steals one's breath, but soon, the sheer vividness of the overlapping blossoms begins to suffocate, and eventually, fatigue steals its way in, permeating one's body.
Under the Cherry Tree by Watanabe Junichi

I like a lot of the imagery used in this novel.
Need to translate better. Using steal twice in that sentence doesn't feel right.

Various quotes from Reaper's Gale:

“Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.”

“The slower your path, the muddier your boots?'
'Even so,' Icarium said, nodding.
'Time is nothing like that.'
'Are you so certain? When we must wait, our minds fill with sludge, random thoughts like so much refuse. When we are driven to action, our current is swift, the water seemingly clear, cold and sharp.”

“-(...) There's towns, Urb. An' the closer we get t'Letheras, the more of them. Wha's in towns, Urb? Taverns. Bars. So, we're not takin' a straight, pre-dic-table route.
- We're invading Lether from tavern to tavern?
- Aye.”

“Why, without a sense of humour, you are blind to so much in the world. To human nature. To the absurdity of so much that we say and do.”

“Why is it, I wonder, that organizations such as yours are invariably run by pitiful human failures? By small-minded psychotics and perverts. All bullied as children, of course. Or abused by twisted parents – I’m sure you have terrible tales to confess, of your miserable youth. And now the power is in your hands, and oh how the rest of us suffer.”

From Memories of Ice:

“Kallor shrugged. '[...] I have walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?'

'Yes,' [said Caladan Brood.] 'You never learn.”

Gardens of the Moon:

“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'
The Imass shrugged before replying.
'I think of futility, Adjunct.'
'Do all Imass think about futility?'
'No. Few think at all.'
'Why is that?'
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her.
'Because Adjunct, it is futile.”

I remember having this on my mind for a month or more leading up to the creation of this thread:



I just found this so very human to think about all the lost culture over time that we're not even aware of ever existing. I thought it would make a good addition to this thread (considering it was one of the inspirations for the thread).

"... since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed"
-UNESCO constitution.

SMAC has some great ones

"Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist. " -Academician Prokhor Zakharov

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

this is pretty long for a quote, but is without doubt the best piece of writing I have ever encountered.

RIP Terry.