Great Lines from Literature (&/or Pulp Fiction)

[Drogue]

So many from The History Boys:

Headmaster: There's a vacancy in history.
Tom Irwin (new part-time teacher): [Thoughtfully] That's very true.
Headmaster: In the school.
Tom Irwin: Ah.

[Posner has confessed to Irwin that he thinks he is homosexual and in love with Dakin]
Posner: Do you ever look at your life?
Tom Irwin: I thought everybody did.
Posner: I'm a Jew... I'm small... I'm homosexual... and I live in Sheffield.
[pause]
Posner: I'm ****ed.

[Dakin is annoyed because he thinks Irwin doesn't like him]
Posner: But he doesn't understand, Irwin *does* like him. He seldom looks at anyone else.
Scripps: How do you know?
Posner: Because nor do I. Our eyes meet looking at Dakin.

Timms: You've got crap handwriting, sir!
Tom Irwin: It's your eyesight that's bad, and we know what that's caused by.
Timms: Sir! Is that a coded reference to the mythical dangers of self-abuse?
Tom Irwin: Possibly. It might even be a joke.
Timms: A joke, sir. Oh. Are jokes going to be a feature, sir? We need to know as it affects our mindset.

Dakin coming onto his teacher via the medium of World War II:

Dakin (student): How do you think history happens?
Tom Irwin (teacher): What?
Dakin: How does stuff happen, do you think? People decide to do stuff. Make moves. Alter things.
Tom Irwin: I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Dakin: No? Think about it.
Tom Irwin: Some do... make moves, I suppose. Others react to events. In 1939 Hitler made a move on Poland. Poland defended itself.
Dakin: ...gave in.
Tom Irwin: Is that what you mean?
Dakin: No. Not Poland anyway. Was Poland taken by surprise?
Tom Irwin: To some extent. Though they knew something was up.

Thinks about it:

Dakin: I just wanted to say thank you.
Scripps: So? Give him a subscription to The Spectator or a box of Black Magic. Just because you've got a scholarship doesn't mean you've got to give him unfettered access to your dick.

Then does it properly:

Dakin: I'm just kicking the tyres on this one but, further to the drink, what I was really wondering was whether there were any circumstances in which there was any chance of your sucking me off.
[pause]
Dakin: Or something similar.
[pause]
Dakin: Actually, that would please Hector (another teacher).
Tom Irwin: What?
Dakin: "Your sucking me off." It's a gerund. He likes gerunds. And your being scared ****less, that's another gerund.
Tom Irwin: I didn't know you were that way inclined.
Dakin: I'm not, but it's the end of term; I've got into Oxford; I though we might push the boat out.

Yes, lots of it's about repressed (and non-repressed) gay feelings, Hector likes feeling up the boys while on the back of his motorbike, and such, but it's a brilliant film.

[Arrian]

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 heart-ache 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 despised 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 fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered 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 pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

...

Three Rings for the Eleven Kings under the Sky
Seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone
Nine for mortal men doomed to die
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie
One Ring to Rule them all, One Ring to Find them
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie

And much more from LotR.

...

[VINCENT]
You want some bacon?

[JULES]
No, man, I don't eat pork.

[VINCENT]
Are you Jewish ?

[JULES]
No, I ain't Jewish, i just don't dig on swine, that's all.

[VINCENT]
Why not?

[JULES]
Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.

[VINCENT]
But bacon tastes good, pork chops taste good...

[JULES]
Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie,
But I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy mother****ers.
Pigs sleep and root in ****, that's a filthy animal.
I don't eat nothin' that ain't got sense enough to disregard its own feces.

[VINCENT]
How about a dog? A dog eats its own feces

[JULES]
I don't eat dog either

[VINCENT]
Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?

[JULES]
I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy, but it's definately dirty.
But, dogs got personality, personality goes a long way.

[VINCENT]
So by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filty animal. Is that true?

[JULES]
We' have to be talkin' 'bout one charmin' mother****in' pig.
I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?

...

You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you.

You seem a decent fellow, I hate to die

And many more where that came from too.

...

Treasure! Bath Tub! Treasure Bath! I'M GOING TO HAVE A TREASURE BATH!

Wash this

...

Cop: I can put you in Queens on the night of the hijacking.
Hockney: Really? I live in Queens, did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Got a team of monkeys working around the clock on this?

-Arrian

[DAVOUT]

"Bush was in denial about Iraq."
Bob Woodward, State of denial,Simon & Schuster, Chapter 24, page 267

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Arrian


...



And much more from LotR.

...

A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you *stand, Men of the West!*

[Arrian]

"There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world. Beneath even the deepest delvings of the dwarves the Earth is gnawed at by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he."

I'm paraphrasing from memory, so that might be a bit off.

I love that one.

-Arrian

[Zero]

**** you, **** you, **** you, you're cool, and **** you, I'm out!

[Pekka]

Zero, yes!!! Half Baked

[Zero]

Brian: First of all to understand what happened to killer, you gotta understand who killer the dog was. Now killer was born to a three-legged ***** of a mother. He was always ashamed of this, man. And then right after that he's adopted by this man, Tito Liebowitz he's a small time gun runner and a rotweiler fight promoter. So he puts killer into training. They see killer's good. He is damn good. But then he had the fight of his life. They pit him against his brother nibbles. And killer said "no man that's my brother, I can't fight nibbles" but they made him fight anyway, and killer, he killed nibbles. Killer said "that's it!" he called off all his fights, and he started doing crack, and he freaked out. Then in a rage, he collapsed, and his heart no longer beat. wow.

Thurgood Jenkins: You know uh, I never thought I'd say this to anybody, but you two smoke entirely too much reefer.

[Adam Smith]

Three Different Perspectives

"Wherever Macduff sits, THAT is the head of the table."
-Macbeth

"I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety"
-Henry V

"God made him, therefore let him pass for a man"
-The Merchant of Venice
(I was only narrowly dissuaded from naming our oldest daughter Portia )

[Zkribbler]

From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, the Tertiary Phase:

Marvin: You must realize that I have an IQ about 10 billion times greater than yours. Allow me to demonstrate. Pick a number, any number.

Zem: 5.

Marvin: Wrong! ...See what I mean?

[lord of the mark]

"I sing of myself, and what I assume you shall assume for every bit of me as good belongs to you"

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself


"It is not despair, for despair is for those who can see the end without doubt"
LOTR


"Nada. Nada y plus nada"
Hemingway - A Clean Well-lighted Place

"No one ever commited suicide in Brooklyn. They were too depressed"
Woody Allen - Crimes and Misdemeanors

"Wingardium Leviosa"
JK Rowlings, Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone


"The wrath of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, hath melted like snow at the glance of the Lord"
Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib

"Consider yourself fortunate that you have John Adams to abuse, for no sane man would tolerate it"
Edwards and Stone, 1776

"Its no crime to be poor, but then its no great honor either"
Bock and Harnick (from Shalom Aleichem) "Fiddler on the Roof"

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"
Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

[Zkribbler]

The moving finger writes
And having writ
Moves on.
Not all your piety nor wit
Can call it back to erase half a line
Nor all your tears
Wash out a single word

The Rubiyat of Omar Kyyam

[Addled Platypus]

first, you must spank us
then the oral sex

we kill the women, then rape the cows

badges...badges...
we dont need no stinking badges

[Addled Platypus]

In order to become certain of the true end for which a cause actsthe effect must be at all times and in all places.
There have not been vessels at all tiimes and on all seas: thus it cannot be said that the ocean has been made for veseels. One feels how ridiculous it would be to allege that nature had wrought from the earliest times to adjust itself to our arbitrary inventions, whic have all appeared to late; but it is very evident that if noses have not been made for spectacles, thay have been made for smelling, and that there have been noses ever since there have been men

Voltaire

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you *stand, Men of the West!*

Bah! Why quote the second-rate imitation from LOTR when you can quote the glorious original:

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.