"For in the end it is Middle-earth and its dwellers that we love, not Tolkien's considerable gifts in showing it to us. I said once that the world he charts was there long before him, and I still believe it. He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers- thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams."
-Peter S Beagle, 14 July 1973

I've got things to do, my making and my singing, my talking and my walking, and my watching of the country. "
--Tom Bombadil

" It is never easy, sweet child, to have a real gift: something else is withhelp to compensate... If you won't surrender the mark, you'll never be more than half alive. " --Robinton, Masterharper of Pern, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger

"For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvellous joy."
--Merriman Lyon, Merlin, Silver on the Tree

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.
--Mark Twain

"I allow it," returned the other; "but I believe it is not always rightfully imputed to the bent for poetry: that is only one effect of the common cause.--Jack, says his father, is indeed no scholar; nor could all the drubbings from his master ever bring him one step forward in his accidence or syntax: but I intend him for a merchant.--Allow the same indulgence to Tom.--Tom reads Virgil and Horace when he should be casting accounts; and but t'other day he pawned his great-coat for an edition of Shakespeare.--But Tom would have been as he is, though Virgil and Horace had never been born, though Shakespeare had died a link-boy; for his nurse will tell you, that when he was a child, he broke his rattle, to discover what it was that sounded within it; and burnt the sticks of his go-cart, because he liked to see the sparkling of timber in the fire.--'Tis a sad case; but what is to be done?--Why, Jack shall make a fortune, dine on venison, and drink claret.--Ay, but Tom--Tom shall dine with his brother, when his pride will let him; at other times, he shall bless God over a half-pint of ale and a Welsh-rabbit; and both shall go to heaven as they may,--That's a poor prospect for Tom, says the father.--To go to heaven! I cannot agree with him."
--Henry Mackenzie, from The Man of Feeling Chapter XXXIII, 1886 Edition

Literature

Unsorted

The Sciences

Misc Quotes 

Other Mysteries

Humor

• Computers
• Physics
• Making fun of others
• Lapsus Linguae
• Star Trek

Humanity(& some Society)

• Trials
• Darkness
• Pain
• Faith
• Hope
• Revelations
• Love
• Thought
• Politics
• Education
• Business

Literature

Peter Beagle

"Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them."
--The Last Unicorn

"Where you are going now, few will mean you anything but evil, and a friendly heart - however foolish - may be as welcome as water one day. Take me with you, for laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you."
--Schmendrick, The Last Unicorn

" Many things seem determined to happen to me for the first time, and your company will surely not be the strangest of them, nor the last. "
--The Last Unicorn, The Last Unicorn

" She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. Of all unicorns, she is the only one who knows what regret is - and love. "
--Schmendrick, The Last Unicorn

" Robin hood is a myth; a classic example of the heroic folk-figure synthesiszed out of need. John Henry is another. Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl. "
--Captain Cully
"Nay, Cully, you have it backward. There's no such person as you, or me, or any of us. Robin and Marian are real, and we are the legend. "
--Molly Grue, The Last Unicorn

" Whoever you are, you know very well that Robin Hood is the fable and I am the reality. No ballads will accumulate around my name, unless I write them myself; no children will read of my adventures in their schoolbooks and play at being me after school. And when the professors prowl through the old tales, and scholars sift the old songs to learn if Robin Hood ever truly lived, they will never, never find my name, not till they crack the world for the grain of its heart."
--Captain Cully, The Last Unicorn

" He tried to explain to the oak that love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal. "
--The Last Unicorn

"That king's daughter would never have run away to see my shadow. If I had shown myself, and she had known me, she would have been more frightened than if she had seen a dragon. I remember that once it never mattered to me whether or not princesses meant what they sang. I went to them all and laid my head in their laps, and a few of them rode on my back, though most were afraid. But I have no time for them now, princesses or kitchenmaids. I have no time. "
--The Last Unicorn, The Last Unicorn

" The eyes would never be joyous, any more than they could ever turn green or blue, but they too had wakened in the earth."
--The Last Unicorn

Schmendrick swung the cage door wide and said softly, "Step down, lady. You are free."
-TLU

So they circled one another like a double star, and under the shrunken sky there was nothing real but the two of them.
--TLU, on the harpy and the unicorn.

The unicorn watched him with great interest and a growing uncertainty, not of his heart but of his craft. He made an entire sow out of a sow's ear; turned a sermon into a stone, a glass of water into a handful of water, a five of spades into a twelve of spades, and a rabbit into a goldfish that drowned. Each time he conjured up confusion, he glanced quickly at the unicorn with eyes that said "Oh, but you know what I really did." Once he changed a dead rose into a seed. The unicorn liked that, even though it did turn out to be a radish seed.
--The Last Unicorn

" The unicorn stood still at the edge of the forest and said aloud, 'I am the only unicorn there is.' They were the first words she had spoken, even to herself, in more than a hundred years.

That can't be, she thought. She had never minded being alone, never seeing another unicorn, because she had known that there were others like her in the world, and a unicorn needs no more than that for company. 'But I would know if all the others were gone. I'd be gone too. Nothing can happen to them that does not happen to me.' "
--The Last Unicorn

" The unicorn came very near to explaining that it was hardly for her to have heard of one wizard or another, but something sad and valiant in his voice kept her from it. " --The Last Unicorn, on Schmendrick's introduction of himself.

"It's a rare man indeed who is taken for what he truly is. There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
--Schmendrick, The Last Unicorn

When they stood in front of her cage, gazing silently in at her, the unicorn though bitterly, Their eyes are so sad. How much sadder would they be, I wonder, if the spell that disguises me dissolved and they were left staring at a common white mare? The witch is right- not one would know me. But then a soft voice, rather like the voice of Schmendrick the Magician, said inside her, But their eyes are so sad.
--The Last Unicorn

Thomas Carlyle

Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.
--Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

The Sciences

"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-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars." - J. Michael Stracynski

"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know many things." - J. Michael Stracnyski

"The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are starstuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying t o figure itself out. As we have both learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective." -J. Michael Stracynski

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. . . . the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive."
Frank Herbert, Dune

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the First Time."
-T.S. Elliot

Other Mysteries

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystery."
~Albert Einstein

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
~Douglas Adams

"There are things in the Universe billions of years older than either of our races. They are vast, timeless, and if they are aware of us at all, it is as little more than ants and we have as much chance of communicating with them as an ant has with us. We know. We've tried and we've learned that we can either stay out from underfoot or be stepped on. They are a my stery and I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the Universe, that we have not explained everything." -J. Michael Stracynski

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Albert Einstein

"Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with air and sunlight and running water that whole eons might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort."
- Author Unknown

"Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."
Robert A. Heinlein, opening line of Stranger in a Strange Land

Humor

"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
~Mark Twain

"May you die in bed at 95, shot by a jealous spouse."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
~Charles Dickens, opening line of A Tale of Two Cities

"Women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
-- Robert Anson Heinlein

Always accept a breath mint if one is offered to you.
--Life's Little Instruction Book II

Noooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
--Monty Python

Well, how was I to know the devil would show up?
--Girlfriend From Hell

'Greeks own all restaurants everywhere.'
'After inventing tragedy, all that was left was food services.'
--David Ives, Seven Menus

"That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency."
John Quinton

Computers

What's this script do?
unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep
Hint for the answer: not everything is computer-oriented. Sometimes you're in a sleeping bag, camping out.
(Contributed by Frans van der Zande.)

A Software guy, a Hardware guy and a Mainframe guy are driving across the desert when they get a flat tire. The Mainframe guy says, "Well, now we have to get a new car." The Hardware guy says, "I got a better idea. Let's rotate the tires and see if we can isolate the problem." The Software guy says, "Nah, let's run it another thirty miles and see if the problem reoccurs."

Computer companies are renowned as pretty ruthless operators. But even Backbytes was shocked during a recent meeting with Groupe Bull. A Bull supremo was expounding the virtues of the company's Unix-based secure operating system, Scomp. Apparently, the system has been awarded the US Government's second-highest security classification, the legendary A2. The best that off-the-shelf Unix can manage is a miserable B1. "We could have gone for A1 level security," explained the guru. "But we would have to shoot the programmers afterwards and we didn't think that would be fair."

These are some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler. These are all real. (If you must know, I was bored one afternoon and decompiled the String resources for the compiler.) The compiler is 324k in size so these are just an excerpt I hope. I'm not sure where I stand on the copyright issue.

And the lord said, 'lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement'"

A typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program

You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler

This struct already has a perfectly good definition

Huh?

This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initialiser AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message

Too many errors on one line (make fewer)

Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer

Then there's a former supervisor who sat down to use a Mac in the office. Put his floppy in. Didn't mount. Put another floppy in. Same problem. Tried three or four times before asking for some help. You guessed it. No floppy drive. All the floppies were just falling into the Mac, where they had to be retrieved later by the guy the supervisor called. They taped up the hole.

God is real, unless declared integer.

Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail.

Nobody has ever, ever, EVER learned all of WordPerfect.

Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

Kiss your keyboard goodbye!

Machine-independent: Does not run on any existing machine.

Meets quality standards: Compiles without errors.

Never trust a computer you can't throw out the window. - S. Hunt

On a clear disk you can seek forever. - Denning

Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.

Programming is an art form that fights back.

<-------- The information went data way --------->

System going down at 1:45 for disk crashing.

This system will self-destruct in five minutes.

To err is human; to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.

You have junk mail.

It wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. - Wilkes, 1949

A hacker does for love what others would not do for money. - Laura Creighton

A low level language is one whose programs require attention to the irrelevant.

BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing. - Seymour Papert

I suppose when it gets to that point, we shan't know how it does it. - Turing

Never put off till run-time what you can do at compile-time. - D. Gries

The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected. (6/72)

UNIX is many things to many people, but it has never been everything to anybody.

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
- Donald Knuth

After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless. - Geoffrey James, The Tao of Programming.

Is reading in the bathroom considered Multi-Tasking?

Gotta run, the cat's caught in the printer.

Honey, I Formatted the Kid!

Who is General Failure and why is he reading my disk?

Multitasking: Screwing up several things at once...

The best way to accelerate a Mac is at 9.8 m / sec^2

"E=Mc^5...nahhh...E=Mc^4...nahh...E=Mc^3...ah, the hell with it."

Today's assembler command : EXOP Execute Operator.

'Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.'

...now touch these wires to your tongue!

Computer analyst to programmer: "You start coding. I'll go find out what they want."

According to my calculations the problem doesn't exist.

I used to have a life, then I got v32bis!

Bug? That's not a bug, that's a feature. -T. John Wendel

The programmer's national anthem is 'AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH'. -Weinberg, p.152

Real programmers use: COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE

Logic: The art of being wrong with confidence...

Logic is neither an art or a science but a dodge.

CCITT - Can't Conceive Intelligent Thoughts Today

Do you like me for my brain or my baud?

If at first you don't succeed, call it version 1.0

Maintenance-free: When it breaks, it can't be fixed...

Resistance is useless! (If < 1 ohm)

Compiler A tool for adding an exciting amount of uncertainty to the size, speed and correctness of a program.

"In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt."
~Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"

"Never try to explain computers to a layman. It's easier to explain sex to a virgin."
~Robert Heinlein
(Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers)

"Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan."
~the fortune binary

"BASIC, n.:
A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company."
~the fortune binary

"...Deep Hack Mode -- that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread. "
~Matt Welsh

"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error."
~Weisert

"Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you get a prompt, type like hell."
~the fortune binary

"God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man."
~the fortune binary

"The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it."
~Brian Kernighan

"Pascal:
A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it."
~Datamation, January 15, 1984

"We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese. We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark at which point we relented."
~Haven Tree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow"

"No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking machine, 1943.

"And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies."
~Linus Torvalds

"In Assembly
The computer is so dumb
You have to break down addition into six statements so the computer can understand it.
In Scheme
The computer is so smart
You have to break addition down into six statements so you can understand it.
I feel programmed."
In Assembly, by Roger Lampe

Read the docs throroughly before reporting any bugs. Some of them are features, not bugs.
--Documentation DCK ver 2.0

"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer."
~Farmers' Almanac, 1978

"All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors."
~Unknown

Physics

"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
~Dr.Joy

"Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism. Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet. The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge."
~Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Down is the direction an object falls."
--11th grade Physics book

"We know that God is perfect at everything he does. Therefore we can assume that God is a perfect Blackbody. But a perfect blackbody only exists in theory. Valla... we have proved the nonexistence of God."
(later) "Oh... oops. I just realized the assumption that I made. OK- It doesn't work."
-Caleb Fassett

"Laws of Thermodynamics:
1. You cannot win.
2. You cannot break even.
3. You cannot even get out of the game."
--Anonymous

"Even if I could be Shakespeare, I think I should still choose to be Faraday."
--Aldous Huxley

"Personally, I like the word 'sphere'. It's fun to say."
--Mr. Jon Goetz (Substitue for sphere anything w/ the word Quantum in it, or n-space, or multi-dimensional, or Shrodinger, or Heisenberg...)

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
~Arthur C. Clarke

"And that's the world in a nutshell, an appropriate recceptacle."
~Stan Dunn

Humor: Making Fun of other people.

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
~C. S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia"

"Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others. They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix. Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time, which is all the time."
~Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"

Lapsus Linguae

"Why isn't there some cheap and easy way to prove how much she means to me?"

"Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears? A: No. Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears? A: Picking them up in the air. Q: Where was the dog at this time? A: Attached to the ears."

"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
~The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989

Star Trek

"Eaten any good books lately?"
~Q (to Worf) (STTNG:Deja-Q)

"What is it?" -- Picard about Nagillum
"There's nothing out there; absolutely nothing" -- Data
"Well it's a damn ugly nothing!" -- Geordi [aside to Worf]
(STTNG:Where silence has lease)

"Fate protects fools, little children and ships named Enterprise"
-- Cmdr. Riker (STTNG:Contagion)

"If you prick me, do I not... leak?
-- Data (STTNG:The Naked Now)

"If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"
-- Dr. Crusher (STTNG:Remember Me)

"The universe is a spheroid region, 705 metres in diameter"
-- The Computer (STTNG:Remember Me)

"Please Mrs. Troi! ... and it's Worf; not Woof"
~Worf (Half a Life)

"Some of the colonists objected to having an anatomically correct android running around without any clothes on"
-- Juliana Soong (STTNG:Inheritance)

"They were just sucked into space" -- Riker
"Blown, sir" -- Data
"Sorry, Data" -- Riker
"Common mistake, sir" -- Data
(STTNG:The Naked Now)

"... and get that fish out of my ready room"
-- Captain Jellico (STTNG:Chain of Command, Part I)

"Policemen -- I'd recognize them in any century"
~Professor Moriarty (STTNG:Ship in a Bottle)

[after they kiss]
"What were you just thinking?" -- Jenna
"In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot..." -- Data
"I'm glad I was in there somewhere" -- Jenna

"Good tea. Nice house."
-- Worf, trying to be diplomatic (The Survivors)

"Random chance seems to have operated in our favor" -- Spock
"In plain, non-Vulcan English, we've been lucky" -- McCoy
"I believe I said that, Doctor" -- Spock
(STTOS:The Doomsday Machine)

"Is there anyone on this ship, who even remotely, looks like Satan?" -- Kirk
"I am not aware of anyone who fits that description, Captain" -- Spock
"No, Mr. Spock, I didn't think you would be" -- Kirk
(STTOS:The Apple)

"Whoah! What's that? Is that a spider or a dog?" -- Jadzia
"It's a Paluckoo. The Bajoran moons are full of them" -- Kira
"Oh. I suppose you used to make them your pets and sing songs about them around the campfire" -- Jadzia
"No. We used to eat them" -- Kira
(STDS9:The Siege)

"I have a dream; a dream that all people -- human, Jem'Hadar, Ferengi, Cardassians -- will someday stand together in peace... around my Dabo tables."
-- Quark (STDS9:The Search)

"Get the cheese to sickbay!"
-- B'Elanna Torres (STVOY:Learning Curve)

"Facial art... ooh, how... wilderness of you!"
-- Q re Chakotay (STVOY:Death Wish)

"There's coffee in that nebula!"
-- Janeway (STVOY:The Cloud)

"How many fingers am I holding up?" -- Kirk, making the Vulcan salute
"That's not very damn funny." -- McCoy
~(Star Trek III)

""Darmok and Jelad at Tanagra! Shaka, when the walls fell!"
~The Tamarians in STTNG:Darmok

"Geordi, I cannot stun my cat."
~Data, (STTNG:Forces of Nature)

"It was an adult who did it!"
~Wesley Crusher, (STTNG:The Naked Now)

"It's not you I hate, Cardassian. I hate what I became... because of you."
~O'brien, (STTNG:The Wounded)

Humanity

"Madness has no purpose. Or reason. But it may have a goal."
`pock, "The Alternative Factor", stardate 3088.7

"Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a templt to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one's highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man's birthright. He thought that a place build as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. But Ellsworth Toohey said that this temple was a monument to a profounf hatred of humanity. Ellsworth Toohey said that the essence of exaltation was to be scared out of your wits, to fall down and grovel. Ellsworth Toohey said that man's highest act was to realize his own worthlessness and to beg forgiveness. Ellsworth Toohey said it was depraved not to take for granted that man is something which needs to be forgiven. Ellsworth Toohey saw that this building was of man and of the earth- and Ellsworth Toohey said that this building had its belly in the mud. To glorify man, said Ellsworth Toohey, was to glorify the gross pleasure of the flesh, for the realm of the spirit is beyond the grasp of man.To enter that realm, said Ellsworth Toohey, man must come as a beggar, on his knees. Ellsworth Toohey is a lover of mankind...
"I do not condemn Ellsworth Toohey. I condemn Howard Roark. Abuilding, they say, must be part of its site. In what kind of world did Roark build his temple? For what kind of men? Look around you. Can you see a shrine becoming savred by serving as a setting for Mr. Hopton Stoddard? For Mr. Ralston Holcombe? For Mr. Peter Keating? When you look at them all, do you hate Ellsworth Toohey- or do you damn Howard Roark for the unspeakable indignity which he did commit? Ellsworth Toohey is right, that temple is a sacrilige, though not in the sense he meant. I think Mr. Toohey knows that, however. When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return- it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the much and to let them become the occasion for the whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court stenograpger...
"All the witnesses here have told the truth. But not the whole truth. I am merely filling in the ommissions. They spoke of a thread and of hatred. They were right. The Stoddard Temple is a threat to many things. If it were allowed to exist, nobody would dare to look at himself in the mirror. And that is a cruel thing to do to men. Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don't ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul. Well, they know best. They must have their reasons. They won't say, of course, that they hate you. They will say that you hate them. It's near enough, I suppose. They know the emotion involved. Such are men as they are. So what is the use of being a martyr to the impossible? What is the use of building for a world that does not exist?...
"The Stoddard Temple must be destroyed. Not to save men from it, but to save it from men. What's the difference, however? Mr. Stoddard wins. I am in full agreement with everything that's being done here, except for one point. I didn't think we should be allowed to get away with that point. Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are committing and act of virtue. Let us say that we are moles and we object to mountain peaks. Or, perhaps, that we are lemmings, the animals who cannot help swimming out to self-destruction. I realize fully that at this moment I am as futile as Howard Roark. This is my Stoddard Temple- my first and my last."
~Dominique Francon, speaking in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead

Trials

"An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life."
~Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"

"It was an early earth president, Abraham Lincoln, who best described our situation. 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot 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, or last best hope for Earth.'" -J. Michael Stracynski

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
E. E. cummings

"If you are falling off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. You've got nothing to lose."
Anonymous

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in \par lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."--Ayn Rand

"Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things."
--Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

"Wheresoever you do, go with all your heart."
~Confucius

"You couldn't sleep either."
"No. I heard about your .. situation."
"I heard about yours. As Mr. Garibaldi would say, it's been one hell of a day."
"Yes, a hell of a day."
"And a hell of a year."
"A hell of a 5 years."
"A hell of a life."
".. You win." - J. Michael Stracynski

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt

"The woods are lonely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
-Robert Frost

"We shall go on to the end,
we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,
we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
-Winston Churchill 4 June 1940

"Tomorrow, 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."
William Shakespeare, spoken by Macbeth, Macbeth,(Act V, scene v)

"To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns- puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action."
~Hamlet, By William Shakespear

Darkness

"There is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else."
~Robert Louis Stevenson

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," Aramis said gloomily. "Life is full of sorrow and humiliation. The threads that attach us to happiness are broken one by one, especially threads of gold. Take my advice, d'Artagnan," he went on, giving his voice a touch of bitterness. "When you're in pain, hide it. Silence is the only refuge for those who suffer. Never let anyone even catch a glimpse of your sorrow; inquisitive people drink tears as flies drink the blood of a wounded deer."
~Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, Ch.26

"Athos was thus an extraordinary man. And yet, despite his distinction and refinement, he sometimes sank into sluggish apathy, as old men sink into physical and mental debility. In his periods of lethargy, and they were many, the radiant side of his nature disappeared, as though engulfed in darkness. Then, when the demigod had vanished, what remained was scarcely a man. With his head bowed, his eyes dull, and his speech heavy, he would sit for hours, staring at his bottle and glass, with an occasional glance at Grumaud, who, being used to obeying orders given by signs, always understood the wish expressed by his master's lackluster gaze and satisfied it immediately. If the four friends gathered during one of those periods, a few words, spoken with great effort, woulb be Athos's only contribution to the conversation. He would drink as much as the other three combined, though without showing any effects other than a more pronounced frown and a deeper sadness."
~Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, Ch. 27

"Life Sucks. Cynical, misanthropic male, 34, looking for soul mate but certain not to find her. Drop me a note. I'll call you, we'll talk and I'll ask you out to dinner where I'll probably spend more than I can afford in a feeble attempt to impress you. Then we'll realize we have absolutely nothing in common and we'll go our separate ways, more embittered and depressed than before (if such a thing is possible)."
~the fortune binary and a depressing note...

"This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one. "
~Arthur C Clarke

".. is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be."
Frank Herbert, Dune

"I have looked into the darkness, Na'toth. You can not do that and never be quite the same again." - J. Michael Stracnski

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
--Jack Nicholson (the Joker), Batman (I know there's an earlier attribution to this- Something about a fox... write me if you remember.)

"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today."
~William Allen White

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), What Is Man?(1906)

"God be between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk."- Ancient Egyptian Blessing

"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via."
Translation: "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars."
--Seneca

"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost."
J.R.R. Tolkein

It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important.
"If it is not, what is?"
He could not endure those remembered words.
Ursula K. Le Guin, spoken by Gaverel Rocannon, Rocannon's World

"The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life."
Albert Einstein

"In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." -John I:4-5

"What does the candle represent?"
"Life."
"Whose life?"
"All life, every life. We're all born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars, molecules that do not understand politi cs, 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." - J. Michael Stracnyski

"Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent."
Bruno Jasienski (Yasensky)

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy

Pain

"It's not about excuses. Seventeen years ago, we both died inside. But somehow we survived. For better or worse, that's all we can do. Survive, and maybe one day, forget how much it can hurt to be human." - J. Michael Stracynski

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
Bertrand Russell, Autobiography

"Even in the presence of others he was completely alone."
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says different is selling something.
--Wesley, The Princess Bride

"I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain
I am a rock
I am an island
Don't talk of love
Well, I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb its slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried
I am a rock
I am an island
I have my books and my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock
I am an island
And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries... "
--Simon Garfunkel, "I Am a Rock" (To decide to let the fear of pain keep you from trying is to decide not to live, and not to love.)

Faith

"It doesn't matter that his Grail may or may not exist, what matters is that he strives for the perfection of his soul and the salvation of his race and that he has never wavered a lost faith." - J. Michael Stracynski

"Don't look away, Captain. All life is transitory, a dream. We all come together in the same place, at the end of time. If I don't see you again here, I will see you, in a little while, in a place where no shadows fall." - J. Michael Stracynski

"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."

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
~Albert Einstein

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
~Thomas Paine

"The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know because I have tested it."
~Mark Twain

"Question with boldness even the existance of God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfold fear." -Thomas Jefferson

"It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and good people who have learned the great secret of life. They have found a joy and a wisdom which is a thousand times better than any of the pleasures of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians... and I am one of them."
--St. Cyprian of Carthage, c. 200-258

"He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce."
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one."
-Thomas Jefferson

"May the warm winds of Heaven blow softly on your home,
And the Great Spirit bless all who enter there.
May your mocassins make happy tracks in many snows,
And may the rainbow always touch your shoulder."
~Cherokee Blessing

"That a man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had."
~Variation on a poem by Bessie Stanley, 1905. Often misattributed to Emerson or Robert Louis Stevenson

"Religion is for folks who want to avoid going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have already been there." -Anonymous

Hope

"So much has been lost, so much forgotten. So much pain, so much blood. And for what, I wonder. The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible inbetween. But there is still time to cease that one last fragile moment. To choose something better, to make a difference, as you say. And I intend to do just that." - J. Michael Stracynski

"Contrary to the cliche, genuinely nice guys most often finish first or very near it."
-Malcolm S. Forbes

"Take voyages... Attempt them. There's Nothing else." ~Tennessee Williams.

"It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them."
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." -Author Unknown

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
Theodore Roosevelt

"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
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."
-The final stanza of Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson

"One man scorned and covered with scars
still strove with his last ounce of courage
to reach the unreachable stars;
and the world will be better for this."
-Cervantes

"Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered."
~Daniel Webster

Revelations

"It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one day like any other day, only shorter."
~Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"

"Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing."
~E. Dijkstra

"I just ate a whole package of Sweet Tarts and a can of Coke. I think I saw God."
~B. Hathrume Duk

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it."
~William James

"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors." - J. Michael Stracynski

"What else have I missed?"
"Oh. The usual. The good times, and the bad times, the revelations, the revolutions. Outbreaks of hysteria, the parade of scandals, promises, constitutions, and the occasional war." - J. Michael Stracynski

"Sports are something one does, not something one watches on TV."
Anonymous

"It seems to me that the secret of true happiness in life is to know what you are and then be content to be that, in style, head up and proud, and not yearn to be something else." -Robert Anson Heinlein

"I believe that I have been touched. That I am meant for something greater. A greater darkness or a greater good, I can no longer say. All I have ever wanted is to serve our people. I need to see what is before me. If I should escape it, or embrace it. If there is any longer a choice."
"There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decision we have already made. If you understand that, there's hope. If not .."- J. Michael Stracynsk

"Aliquando et insanire iucundum est."
Translation: "It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman."
--Seneca

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."
Kurt Vonnegut

"Life is like a voyage that is homeward bound."
~Herman Melville

"G'Quon wrote: 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 revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always paved in pain." -J Michael Stracynski

"My life is almost over. My world, all I hoped for, gone. You two are my last chance, for this place, for my people, for my own redemption. There is a ship, hidden behind the pal ace, my guard will take you there. In exchange for your lives, all I ask is that you and your allies help to free my people. I can do nothing more for them." - J. Michael Stracynski

"I can not tell you tha t your pain will ever go away. I can not tell you that you'll ever forget his face. I can only tell you that it was necessary. You may have helped to save our people. You did a hard thing. But you still have your heart, and your heart is a good one. You w ould not be in such great pain otherwise. That means there is still hope for you. And for that.. I find that I still envy you." - J. Michael Stracynski

"It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature- and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning." -Ayn Rand

"The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now." ~Bill Cosby

"You may not believe this, G'Kar, but all I ever wanted is what is right for my world. I'm a patriot, as you are. I have made some .. very poor choices in the last two years. Because I did not think, those choices almost destroyed my world, and yours. That is a humbling realization, G'Kar. If for the single wrong word I can become the enemy, do I any longer really understand who the enemy is?" - J. Michael Stracynski

"While we wait for chocolate malteds I notice a high-schooler sitting at the counter exchanging looks with the girl next to him. She's gorgeous, and I'm not the only
other one who notices it. The girl behind the counter waiting on them is also watching with an anger she thinks no one else sees. Some kind of triangle. We keep
passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives."
--Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

"It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth~ and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up~ That we begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the last." ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

"Everyone dies, but not everyone lives."
~A.Sachs

"The universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is not narn or human or centauri or gaim or minbari. It speaks in the language of hope."
"It speaks in the language 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 s peaking through us and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. 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 darkne s s, no matterthe loss, no matter the fear. .. We are one.' Here, gathered together in common cause, we begin to realize this singular truth and this singular rule that we must be kind to one another. Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light our way to a better future. We are one."
"We are one." - J. Michael Stracynski

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854), II, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
Albert Einstein

Love of All Kinds: The heart, and its noblest pursuit.

" You don't have to have a golden bridle to catch a unicorn; that part's the fairy tale. You need only to be pure of heart. " --The Last Unicorn

Laurie shook his head. "No, Pug. There are many ways to love someone. Sometimes we want love so much, we're not too choosy about who we love. Other times we make love such a pure and noble thing, no poor human can ever meet our vision. But for the most part, love is a recognition, an opportunity to say, 'There is something about you I cherish.' It doesn't entail marriage, or even physical love. There's love of parents, love of city or nation, love of life, and love of people. All different, all love. "
-Raymond E. Feist - Magician: Master

And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its value.
--Charles Dickens

" No, he does not want my thoughts," she said softly. " He wants me, as much as the Red Bull did, and with no more understanding. But he frightens me even more than the Red Bull, because he has a kind heart. No, I will never speak a promising word to him. "
--The Last Unicorn

He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Of music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

"No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so simple, really. "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now. You just can't hold people, you can't own them. I mean it's only natural, a natural process really. Meet. Love. Part. Life goes on. There was never any reason to expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know." There were those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated. "I don't hold a grudge. I can't."
  "You do," Grandfather Trout said. "And you don't understand."
-- Little, Big, "John Crowley"

If there's a woman out there who you find truly attractive, who you think about, let's say, most of the time, who represents even part of what you think makes the world worth fighting for, and who doesn't view you as an entirely sexless shoulder to lean on, you have to do something about it.
--Wesley, Angel Season 5 Episode 14

I'm not that guy; that guy is charming, and funny, and emotionally useful. I'm the guy in the dark corner with the blood habit and the 200 years of psychic baggage.
--Angel, Angel Season 5 Episode 14

To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. --G. K. Chesterton

Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves.
--Ernest Renan

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
--Denis Diderot

It doesn't matter who you love, or how you love, but that you love
--Rod McKuen

Fortune and love befriend the bold.
--Ovid

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
-- Bertrand Russell

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.
-- Sir Rabindranath "Tagore" Thakur

Love is being stupid together.
-- Paul Valery

There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that
enough love will not heal, no door that enough love will not bridge, no
wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will
not redeem... It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble,
how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A
sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could
love enough, you could be the happiest and most powerful being in the
world...
-- Emmet Fox

He did not look directly at the unicorn, but stole small sights of her as stealthily as though he could be made to put them back. White and secret, morning-horned, she regarded him with piercing gentleness, but he could not touch her.
--TLU

"They are surely gone, lady, all but you. When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be."
--Schmendrick, The Last Unicorn

Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.
--Robert A. Heinlein

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise
--Samuel Jackson

" Love is one moment of knowing, and a thousand years of trying to understand. " --Tom, February 1, 2004

"Smile all the time, even when you're sad. You never know when someone could be falling in love with your smile."
~unknown

A career is great, but you can't run your fingers through its hair.
--fortune

"Masculine and feminine. I understand" -- Nagillum
"Yes. That is how we propogate our species" -- Picard
"Please demonstrate" -- Nagillum
"Not likely!" -- Dr. Pulaski
(STTNG:Where silence has lease)

"One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her, he allowed his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you wish, anything I am, anything I can ever be... That's what I want to offer you -- not the things I'll get for you, but the thing in me that will make me able to get them. That thing -- a man can't renounce it -- but I want to renounce it -- so that it will be yours -- so that it will be in your service -- only for you."

The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie Kelly?"

He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. He never saw that girl again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself on never needing a lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the years that followed. "
~Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tounges, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears." (v. 8-10)

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
Victor Hugo

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."
~Andre Gide

"I am but a stranger... as are we all. Trapped inside our separate skins, we can not bear each other's pain, and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it, and that sometimes, given luck, we find someone to walk beside us. At least for a little ways."
-The Phantom Stranger

Friends bring out the beautiful things in each other that no one else looks hard enough to find.
--Unknown

"If people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever."
- The Crow

"Hey, come on Chief, it's not your fault. I heard what happened. You offered to help, he walked away."
"Yeah, I know, but the thing is: sometimes people walk away because they want to be alone, and sometimes they walk away because they want to see if you care enough to follow them into hell. I think I went the wrong way."

"Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same."
-Author Unknown

"Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offense. There is nothing love cannot face;there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and endurace. In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.
~1 Corinthians 13

"And all I could taste is this moment"
"And I don't want the whole world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand. When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am."
~Goo Goo Dolls, the song Iris.

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
~William Blake

"We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend."
~Robert Louis Stevenson

"Say 'I Love You' to those you love. The eternal silence is long enough to be silent in, and that awaits us all." ~George Elliot

"If I had told her the whole truth, it would've destroyed her belief in the strength and the wisdom of our caste. Delenn does not walk in the same world you and I walk in. She does not see the same world you and I see. In her world we are better than we are, we care more than we care. We act towards each other with compassion. I much prefer her world to that of my own, and I will not allow anything to threaten that." -J. Michael Stracynski

"The way your heart sounds makes all the difference. It's what decides if you'll endure the pain that we all feel. The way your heart beats makes all the difference. In learning to live, Spread before your soul. So forever spread the dreams within our hearts, through Nature's inflexible grace. I'm learning to live." -Dream Theatre

"If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater."
~Author Unknown

"Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks."
Goethe

"Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else's list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever

"Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough."
Seneca

"It takes two to speak truth---one to speak and another to hear."
-Henry David Thoreau

"Some people never say the words "I love you"
It's not their style to be so bold
Some people never say those words "I love you"
But like a child, they're longing to be told..."
--Paul Simon, "Something So Right"

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry a nd even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what
happened on the banks.
Will Durant, The History of Civilization

This is specific to romantic Love, but everything from the general "Love of all Kinds" applies as well.

"Growing up sucks. And Not all kisses are magic and most boys don't live up to expectations... but, there are those times when everything, I mean, love, romance, relationships, it all falls together perfectly, and... it's incredible." -Joey Potter

"Creation of woman from the rib of man: She was not made of his head to top him; nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him; but out of his side to be equal with him; under his arm, to be protected; and near his heart to be loved." - Author Unknown

"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."- J. Michael Stracynski

"It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost ..."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever

"The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident."
Sir Hugh Walpoe

"I wish I was less of a thinking man
And more of a fool who's not afraid of rejection..."
--Billy Joel, "Sleeping With the Television On"

"Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit."
Translation: "Those whom true love held, it will go on holding."
--Seneca

Some girls grow up strong and bold
Some boys are quiet and kind
Some race on ahead, some follow behind
Some grow in their own space and time
Some raise children, and some never do
You can dream all the day, never reaching the end
Of everything possible for you.
You can be anybody that you want to be
You can love whomever you will
You can travel any country where your heart leads
And know I will love you still
You can live by yourself
You can gather friends around
You can choose one special one
But the only measure of your words and your deeds
Will be the love you leave behind when you're gone.
~Flirtations

"A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open th e locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one p e rson we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes li fe come to life."
Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever

"So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break..."
--Billy Joel, "And So It Goes"

"The joy of late love is like green firewood when set aflame, for the longer the wait in lighting, the greater heat it yields and the longer its force lasts."
-Christien de Troyes, "The Knight with the Lion"

'Try Again,' the unicorn said. 'You are my friend. Try again.'
--The Last Unicorn

Friendship

This is specifically for friendships, but just about everything from the "Love of all Kinds" section applies as well.

"Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like."
Unknown

"Hold a true friend with both hands, and always keep them close to your heart." - Nigerian Proverb

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us." ~Epicurus, 3rd century BCE

"Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of." ~Sarah Orne Jewett

Thought & Freedom

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
-- Captain Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie (STTNG:The Drumhead)

"We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge."
~George Will

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."
~Lazarus Long

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death....Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
Bertrand Russell

"Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit."
Translation: "There has not been any great talent without an element of madness."
--Seneca

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
-Bertrand Russell

"What luck for rulers that men do not think."
~Adolf Hitler

"Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes, and feel with their own hearts."
Albert Einstein

"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves?"
"Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before dest ruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
Isaac Asimov, The New Hugo Winners

"A man's knowledge is like an expanding sphere, the surface corresponding to the boundary between the known and the unknown. As the sphere grows, so does its surface; the more a man learns, the more he realizes how much he does not know. Hence the most ignorant man thinks he knows it all."
~L. Sprague de Camp

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
~Winston Churchill

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
~M. Cartmill

"I am the wisest man in Athens because I know I don't know. I am only singularly ignorant. The rest of the citizens are
twice ignorant. They think they know, but they still don't know."
~Plato

"If one set aside time for a business appointment or shopping expedition, that time is inviolable. But if one says, `I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone,' one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What commentary on our civilization."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being, the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of, is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness---it means more to me than my life itself."
Marquis de Sade

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
~William Butler Yeats

"This morning, I was the leader of the universe, as I know it. This afternoon, I am but a voice, in a chorus. But I think it was a good day."
-From ST:TNG episode "First Contact" (not the movie.)

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
Douglas Adams

"When any government . . . undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you mus t not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
Robert Anson Heinlein, If This Goes On...

"With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Picard, ST:TNG, quoting a fictional judge, The Drumhead

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
Albert Einstein

"How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will."
Albert Einstein

"This above all: to thine own self be true."
William Shakespeare, Hamlet,(Act I, scene iii)

"We create the meaning in our lives. It does not exist independently. Being Anla-shok 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." - J. Michael Stracynski

"No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by the 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 can not stand. " - J. Michael Stracynski

"All my life .. I have been responsible only for myself. When I risk , I risked alone to avoid making others pay the price for my mistakes. They want me to chose them another way. What if I show then the wrong way? What if they come to me not because of the lesson but because of the teacher? I worry, Ta'Lon, that my shadow may become greater than the message." - J. Michael Stracynski

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to other s, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
Leo Tolstoy

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
Albert Einstein

"So, how does it feel to make history?"
"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy

"When we think we lead we most are led."
Byron

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Albert Einstein

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions b ecause they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
Buddha

"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves."
E. M. Forster

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
Clive Barnes

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw

"What a piece of work is 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!"
William Shakespeare, spoken by Hamlet, Hamlet,(Act II, scene ii)

"Even if we acheive gigantic successes in our work, there is no reason whatsoever to feel conceited and arrogant. Modesty helps one to go forward, whereas conceit makes one lag behind. This is a truth we must always bear in mind."
Mao Tse-tung

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken

"Men May die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."
~John F Kennedy

"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves?"
"Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before dest ruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
Isaac Asimov, The New Hugo Winners

"In the sky there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true."
Buddha

"I have found power in the mysteries of thought."
Euripides, 438 BC

There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."
-Victor Hugo

"Rident stolidi verba Latina!"
Translation: "Fools laugh at the Latin language!"
--Ovid (should that be translated "Fools laugh at the Latin word"? Doesn't matter... concept is the same.)

"Is there anyone so wise as to learn from the experience of others?"
Voltaire

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius."
Henri-Frederic Amiel

"There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth."
Leo Tolstoy

"The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them."
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854), III, Reading

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
Howard Aiken

"If ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile off my face."
Rage Against the Machine

"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, --nor the human race, as I believe, --and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day." -Plato's Republic, Book V

Politics

"Honorable (n) Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, quot;the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.""
~Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"First study the enemy. Seek weakness."
~Romulan Commander, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2

"Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame."
~Laurence J. Peter

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."
~from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association September 12, 1960.

"For me the most excruciating agony was to have the word annihilated before it even left my mouth. I learned, by bitter experience, to hold my tongue; I learned to sit in silence, and even smile, when actually I was foaming at the mouth. I learned to shake hands and say how do you do to all these innocent-looking fiends who were only waiting for me to sit down in order to suck my blood."
~Henry Miller

"Equals Make The Best of Friends"
~Aesop (Included here only for a reference to the next quote.)

"There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals."
~Sir Francis Bacon

"If you can't convince them, confuse them."
~Harry S. Truman

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."
~H.H."Saki"Munro

Education

"But in high school the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heard clearly in the dreams of later years."
--Cujo, Stephen King

"Maturity is only a short break in adolescence."
~Jules Feiffer

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
~Mark Twain

Business

"In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save."

S/F

Quotes about Science Fiction & Fantasy. Note that many quotes from science fiction and fantasy are spread throughout this document.

"As for the basic assumptions about individuality and self, this is the core of what I like about cyberpunk. And it's the core of what I like about certain pre-gibson neophile techie SF writers that certain folks here like to put down. Not everyone makes the same assumptions. I haven't lost my mind... it's backed up on tape."
Peter da Silva

New: October 1999

"Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions, right here!"
~the fortune binary

"Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North Carolina."
~the fortune binary

"The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons."
~Dr. David Butler, British psephologist

"Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
~the fortune binary

"The greatest disloyalty one can offer to great pioneers is to refuse to move an inch from where they stood."
~the fortune binary

"Quality control, n.: Assuring that the quality of a product does not get out of hand and add to the cost of its manufacture or design. "
~the fortune binary

"A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage. "
~Blake

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
~Mark Twain

"A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam."
~the fortune binary

"I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that nature with which I am acquainted. Mythology comes nearest to it of any."
~Henry David Thoreau

"The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings."
~H. L. Mencken

"Kaufman's Law:
A policy is a restrictive document to prevent a recurrence of a single incident, in which that incident is never mentioned."
~the fortune binary

"Do you know the one -- "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by ..." You could feel the wind at your back, about you ... the sounds of the sea beneath you. And even if you take away the wind and the water, it's still the same. The ship is yours ... you can feel her ... and the stars are still there."
~Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4

"You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard."
~the fortune binary

"Flying is the second greatest feeling you can have. The greatest feeling? Landing... Landing is the greatest feeling you can have."
~the fortune binary

"The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized -- and never knowing."
~David Viscott

"I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer."
~Brendan Behan

"I doubt, therefore I might be."
~the fortune binary

"For I swore I would stay a year away from her; out and alas! but with break of day I went to make supplication."
~Paulus Silentarius, c. 540 A.D.

"It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people."
Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

"But honor brings little comfort to a man alone in his home, or in his heart."
~General Mar'Tog, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, You Are Cordially Invited

"So what you're saying is, I should become a bum?" asked Tom. To this John replied, "No. Yes. Not exactly."

"What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window."
~the fortune binary

"Q: What do agnostic, insomniac dyslexics do at night?
A: Stay awake and wonder if there's a dog."
~the fortune binary

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
~T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"

"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order."
~Doctor Who

"Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay."
~the fortune binary

"Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree."
~The fortune binary

"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
~Gotama Buddha

"Never try to outstubborn a cat."
~Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

"The smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn."
~Johnny Carson

"Nobody is one block of harmony. We are all afraid of something, or feel limited in something. We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked to each other--not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too. It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks."
~Live Ullman

"When users see one GUI as beautiful,
other user interfaces become ugly.
When users see some programs as winners,
other programs become lossage.

Pointers and NULLs reference each other.
High level and assembler depend on each other.
Double and float cast to each other.
High-endian and low-endian define each other.
While and until follow each other.

Therefore the Guru
programs without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Warnings arise and he lets them come;
processes are swapped and he lets them go.
He has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When his work is done, he deletes it.
That is why it lasts forever.
"
~the fortune binary

"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering."
~the fortune binary

"Q: How do you play religious roulette?
A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets struck by lightning first."
~the fortune binary

"Laughing at you is like drop kicking a wounded humming bird."
~the fortune binary

"Evolution is a million line computer program falling into place by accident."
~the fortune binary

"After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn."
~the fortune binary

"You are what chivalry has become,"
"Then I weep for Chivalry,"
~October 3,1999

"Well it's a new ship - but she's got the right name. Now you remember that, you hear?" -- Leonard 'Bones' McCoy
"I will, Sir" -- Data
"You treat her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home" -- McCoy
~(STTNG:Encounter at Farpoint, Part I)

"Seize the time, Meribor. Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again" -- Picard (STTNG:The Inner Light)

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid."
-- Q (STTNG:Q Who)

" The minstrel boy to the war has gone
in the ranks of death ye will find him
his fathers sword he hath girded on
with his wild harp slung behind him
land of song said the warrior bard (land of sunsets, the warrior bard?)
though all the world betrays thee
one sword at least thy rights shall guard
one faithful harp shall praise thee. "
~A song sung by O'Brien in "The Wounded"

"We do exactly what we would do if this Q never existed. If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for who we really are"
-- Captain Picard (STTNG:Encounter At Farpoint)

"Logic is the beginning of wisdom; not the end."
-- Spock (Star Trek VI)

"Time is the fire in which we burn..."
-- Dr. Soran, Star Trek: Generations

"Captain ... I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say, 'To Hell with our orders.'" -- Data, after Picard announces that he's going to violate his orders from Star Fleet Command "
~Star Trek, First Contact

"Spanning four decades
they have thrilled us with their adventures,
amazed us with their discoveries,
and inspired us with their courage.
Their ship has journeyed beyond imagination.
Her name has become legend, her crew the finest ever assembled.
We have travelled beside them from one corner of the galaxy to the other.
They have been our guides, our protectors, and our friends.
They are part of the dream that is Star Trek."
~From a Star Trek VI Teaser

"There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending."
~Author unknown. Generall misattributed to Abraham Lincoln

"Do you know the one -- 'All I ask is a tall ship...and a star to steer her by...' You could feel the wind at your back, about you... the sounds of the sea beneath you. And even if you take away the wind and the water, it's still the same. The ship is yours - you can feel her - and the stars are still there."
~Kirk, STTOS:The Ultimate Computer

"How compact your bodies are, and what a variety of senses you have! This thing you call language, though... most interesting. You depend on it for so very much, but is any of you really its master? But this... aloneness. You are so alone. You live out your lives in this shell of flesh: self-contained, separate. How lonely you are, how terribly lonely."
~Kollos, in Spock's body, (STTOS:Is there in truth no beauty?)

Kirk: What I have done - I had to do.
Sarek: But at what cost? Your ship, your son.
Kirk: If I hadn't tried, the cost would have been my soul.
~Star Trek III, The Search for Spock

"It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before; a far better resting place I go to, than I have ever known."
~Kirk, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

"No, space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is merely one of the places where we shall meet the challenge."
-David Gerrold

""

""

""

""

A lady on the airplane strikes up a conversation with the fellow sitting in the next seat, "..and where are you going?"
"I'm going to San Francisco to a Unix convention," he replies.
"Eunuchs convention?" she questions. "I didn't know there were that many of you."

Why is Client-server Computing like teenage sex: 1. It is on everybody's mind all the time. 2. Everyone talks about it all the time. 3. Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it. 4. Almost no one is REALLY doing it. 5. The few who are doing it are: a) Doing it poorly. b) Sure it will be better next time. c) Not practicing it safely.

Men of peace usually are [brave].
-- Spock, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine And then one day you find
Staying home to watch the rain Ten years have got behind you
You are young and life is long No one told you when to run
And there is time to kill today You missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking And racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter Hanging on in quiet desperation
is the English way
Never seem to find the time The time is gone, the song is over
Plans that either come to nought Thought I'd something more to say...
Or half a page of scribbled lines
-- Pink Floyd, "Time"

The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the master's office while the master waited in silence.
"This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation," began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct. Is it not amazing?"
The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he said.
"Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree to this?"
"Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well pleased.
Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do you know where it might be?"
"Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform in the data center."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

On the night before her family moved from Kansas to California, the little girl knelt by her bed to say her prayers. "God bless Mommy and Daddy and Keith and Kim," she said. As she began to get up, she quickly added, "Oh, and God, this is goodbye. We're moving to Hollywood."

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

"I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return." -Frida Kahlo, in her last diary entry before her death

"I have done a braver thing than all the worthies did, and a braver thence doth spring, and that to keep it hid."
-John Donne

"Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer." -Oscar Wilde (1891)

"I should myself have thought that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one has deliberately entered, and accepting all one’s responsibilities." -Sartre, The Age of Reason

"He who does not understand your silences will probably not understand your words." -Elbert Hubbard

"Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love, he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"I want my old friends / I want my old face / I want my old mind / f*** this time and place." -Ani DiFranco

"It is precisely at their worst that human beings are most interesting." -H. L. Menacken

"All men dream... but not equally. They who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it is vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." -T. E. Lawrence

"Only fantasy has eternal youth. What happened nowhere and never can never age." -Schiller

"Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths." -Aleksander Pushkin "The very nature of our dreams is changing. We have deconstructed the universe and are refusing to rebuild it. This is our madness and our glory. Now we can again begin the true course of our explorations, without preconceptions or agendas." -Lobkowitz

"There will be time, there will be time. To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea." -T.S. Eliot

"Take the clouds from your eyes and see me as I really am." -Don Quixote

"A few hours of mountain climbing turn a villain and a saint into two rather equal creatures. Exhaustion is the shortest way to equality and fraternity and liberty is added eventually by sleep." -Nietzsche, Aphorism 263

"For there is another problem: People are by nature inconstant. It is easy to persuade them of something, but it is difficult to stop them from changing their minds. So you have to be prepared for the moment when they no longer believe." -Machiavelli

"When I was a child, my mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." -Pablo Picasso

"...and once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return ..." -Leonardo Da Vinci

"Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle. These are the journeys I wish to record. Not the ones I made, but the ones I might have made, or perhaps did make in some other place or time." -Jeanette Winterson

"We say 'time', I believe we mean at least two things. We mean changes. And we mean something unchangeable. We mean something that moves. But against an unmoving background. And vice versa. Animals can sense changes. But consciousness of time involves the double sense of constancy and change. Which can only be attributed to those who give expression to it. And that can only be done through language, and only man has language." -Peter Hoeg, Border Liners

"I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place - the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened…the picture is still there and what's more, if you go there-you who never was there-if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you." -Beloved, Toni Morrison

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubborn, persistent illusion." -Albert Einstein

"Time is the moving image of eternity." -Plato

"A book is man's best friend, outside of a dog. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for even the greatest fool may ask more the the wisest man can answer. -- C.C. Colton

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid). -- Lazarus Long

... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged. -- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"

"Rights" is a fictional abstraction. No one has "Rights", neither machines nor flesh-and-blood. Persons... have opportunities, not rights, which they use or do not use. -- Lazarus Long

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev

If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.