Basil > Basil's Quotes

“We must not remind them that giants walk the Earth.”
― Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

“Do I not live? Badly, I know, but I live.”
― Sophocles, The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!”
― Donquixote Doflamingo

“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”
― C.S. Lewis

“All that matters is that you want me.
Say the word & I’ll burn for ten days.”
― Yves Olade, Bloodsport

“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Pylades: I’ll take care of you.
Orestes: It’s rotten work.
Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
― Anne Carson, Euripides

“Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art”
― Margaret Atwood, You are Happy

“Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.”
― Anonymous

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?”
― Plato, The Symposium

“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
― Edward O. Wilson

“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ɴᴏ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴍᴇ.

—Death”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“If there's any guy crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world -- close up. I'm going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“You can have my heart if you have the stomach to take it. Kiss me hard enough to invert me.”
― Yves Olade

“He had green eyes, so I wanted to sleep with him. Green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool. You could drown in those eyes, I said. The fact of his pulse, the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire, not to disturb the air around him. Everyone could see the way his muscles worked, the way we look like animals, his skin barely keeping him inside. I wanted to take him home, and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his like a crash test car. I wanted to be wanted, and he was very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving. You could drown in those eyes, I said, so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.”
― Richard Siken

“MENELAOS: What's wrong with you? What sickness wastes you away?

ORESTES: Conscience.”
― Anne Carson, Euripides

“Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“First we feel. Then we fall.”
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

“And you’ll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday.”
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake