Possible "pull quotes" for upcoming Superiors books

[robkelk]

Christopher

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
– George Bernard Shaw

[robkelk]

Consolidation posting of all quotes posted to date.
Part 1 - Archangels

Christopher

Teach your children well ...
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
- Mark 10:14

The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.
- Penelope Leach

Give us the child until the age of seven and we will answer for the man.
- Society of Jesus

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
- George Bernard Shaw


Janus

Any idiot can make a bike go fast, but getting decent speed out of a cow requires skill.
– Moe Lane, The Great Cow Race of 2003

When you are through changing, you are through.
– Percy Barnevik

A static hero is a public liability. Progress grows out of motion.
- Richard E. Byrd

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau.
Mock on, mock on—'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
- William Blake

I feel the need – the need for speed.
- Top Gun

But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.
- Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
- Friedrich Nietzche

Just to stir things up seemed a good reward in itself.
- Sallust

David Frost: "I like to keep busy."
Caroline Cushing: "Why?"
Frost: "I find it more interesting than keeping still."
- Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon

Chaos is a friend of mine.
- Bob Dylan

So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
- Joseph Addison, in The Campaign (1704), line 287

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
- Chuck Yeager

Change is not merely necessary to life — it is life.
- Alvin Toffler


Jean

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it’s lightning that does the work.
– Mark Twain

Thunder's just a noise, boys! Lightning does the work.
- Chad Brock, Lightning Does The Work

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed.”
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision Of The Human Future In Space

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
- Alexander Pope

An idea is salvation by imagination.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Electricity is really just organized lightning.
- George Carlin

I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies.
- Eden Ahbez

You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
- Randall Munroe, http://xkcd.com/701/, 12 February 2010

I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.
- Paul Simon

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense – there may be totally different cultures using identical tools – but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships.
- Poul Anderson, Margin of Profit (1956)

Politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
- Albert Einstein

As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.
- Nikola Tesla

In Greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant who was strong as long as he had contact with the earth. When he was lifted from the earth he lost strength. So it is with engineers. They must not become isolated from the real world... The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.
- ADM Hyman G. Rickover


Jordi

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.
– Mark Twain, letter to W.D. Howells, 2 April 1899

Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals.
- Robert Anton Wilson

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals... They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
- Henry Beston

Shall we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves only the privilege of imperishability?
- George Eliot

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
- St. Francis of Assisi

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
- Alice Walker

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of manmade evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf.
- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
- William Ralph Inge


Marc

Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
– Proverbs 23:5

Being good is good business.
- Anita Roddick (1942-), British founder of The Body Shop

Adulterate not the coinage, nor shave away fragments therefrom. The coin thou sendest away today shall return unto thee tomorrow, and then whom hast thou robbed?
- David Eddings, The Proverbs of Nedra

Kill not. Dead men cannot buy from thee.
- David Eddings, The Proverbs of Nedra

Pure gold does not fear the furnace.
- Chinese proverb

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
- Edmund Burke

The wealth ov a person should be estimated, not bi the amount he haz, but bi the use he makes ov it. [sic]
- Josh Billings

A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.
- Poul Anderson, Margin of Profit (1956)


Novalis

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.
- Beverly Nichols

Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.
- Ikkyu Sojun

For no one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather than peace, since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.
– Croesus, king of Lydia

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.
– Proverbs 16:32

He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?
- Rudyard Kipling, The Sack of the Gods

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.
- Jane Goodall

Earth laughs in flower.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers are beautiful hieroglyphics of nature, with which she indicates how much she loves us.
- Wolfgang von Geothe

Kiss of the sun for pardon. Song of the birds for mirth. You're closer to God's heart in a garden than any place else on earth.
- Dorothy Frances Gurney

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter! Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom? But we hope it, we know it.
- Goethe
(for Novalis' view of the Redeemed... and the Redeemable)

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm. As you get older, remember you have another hand: the first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.
– Audrey Hepburn

It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.
- Robert E Lee

'Victory after all I suppose!' [Bilbo] said, feeling his aching head. 'Well it seems a very gloomy business.'
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The holm-oak, scarred and blasted by the wind’s chill breath,
Break its own branches off, condemns itself to death.
When brother fights with brother, civil war will start,
Bring pain and grief to all and tear the land apart.
- Grimmelhausen

He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.
- Forrest Tucker
(for Dark or Backwards Novalis)


Oannes

Under water, man becomes an archangel.
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau


Uriel

And tonight when I, at last, God behold, my salute will sweep his blue threshhold with something spotless.
- Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac


Archangel of Music

Madam, I know only two tunes. One is 'God Save the King,' the other isn't.
- attributed to the Duke of Wellington

[robkelk]

Part 2 - Demon Princes

Baal

Though the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword speaks louder and stronger at any given moment.
- Leonard Wibberley

War begun, hell unchained.
- Italian Proverb

Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid, the ships ought to be all captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start again. There would be fun in that.
- 1845 editorial, New York Journal of Commerce

If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place.
- William T. Sherman, letter from Vicksburg, 31 January 1864

I regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash — and it may be well that we become so hardened.
- William T. Sherman, letter to his wife, July 1864

I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!
- William T. Sherman, address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, 1879

Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.
- Psalm 144:1

We are outnumbered, there is only one thing to do. We must attack!
- Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Taranto, 1940

Mankind has had ten thousand years experience in war and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
- T.E. Lawrence

If you're in a fair fight, you didn't plan it properly.
- Nick Lappos (chief R&D pilot, Sikorsky Aircraft)

Wars begin when you will them but do not end when you please
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.
- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.
- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Stop quoting laws to us. We carry swords.
- Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

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

In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it.
- attributed to Erwin Rommel

It is said that when Alexander was on campaign he ate the food of a common soldier. I've always thought that was a bit hard on the poor soldier.
- Hans Rancke-Madsen, March 7, 2011

War is not a river, or a lake, but an ocean of all that is evil.
- Gustav II Adolf


Beleth

Welcome to my nightmare.
- Alice Cooper

To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.
- Francis Bacon

Many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
- Logan Pearsall Smith

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
- Frank Herbert, Dune


Belial

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
- George Carlin


Furfur

Then I took out my razor blade
then I did what God forbade
now the cops are after me, but I proved that I'm no sissy.
- The Ramones, 53rd & 3rd

Fat cat came to play, now he can't run fast enough.
You'd best stay away when the pushers come to shove ...
- Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Zoot Suit Riot

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.
- George Orwell, 1984

Well, he looked at me once, looked at me twice. Look at me again and there's gonna be a fight ...
- The Stray Cats, Rock This Town


Kronos

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
- Woody Allen

wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.
- Matthew 7:13b

When fate throws a dagger at you, there are only two ways to catch it: by the blade or by the handle.
- Chinese Proverb

Fate's malicious and eternal law is that all things must, when they've reached their acme, plummet down more quickly into the depth than they rose.
- L. Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4-65)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in its 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.
- William Shakespere, Macbeth

It's a sin that somehow,
Light is changing to shadow...
- Pink Floyd, On the Turning Away

Facilis est descensus Averni. (It is easy to descend into Hell.)
- Virgil

Corruption of the best becomes the worst.
- Latin proverb


Malphas

To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions
- George Santayana

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else.
- Will Rogers

Runs thick and fast, no one really sees,
Quite what bad it can do,
As it shapes you into something cold,
Like an Eskimo igloo...
- George Harrison, Devil's Radio

The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
- Luke 12:53

And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.
- Matthew 12:25

So what is this sinister secret,
The lie he will tell you is true?
It's that each man you meet on the street
Isn't one man, but two!
- Facade from the musical Jekyll and Hyde

I have learned that pleasing everyone is too hard, but ******* everyone off is a piece of cake.
- anonymous Internet quote

People are okay, taken two or three at a time. More than that and they start to choose up sides and wear armbands.
– George Carlin, Brain Droppings

Just see how virtue repays you,
You turn and someone betrays you,
Betray him first,
And the game's reversed!
- Frank Wildhorn and Nan Knighton, The Riddle, from The Scarlet Pimpernel


Saminga

O Death! How bitter is the thought of you! How quick your coming! How secret your path! How uncertain your hour! How all-embracing your reign!
- Louis of Granada (1505-1588)

There are dead you have to kill.
- Jules Pierre F. S. Desnoyers (1800-1887)

Lovely he looks with his extinguished torch; but, dear gentlemen, Death is not aesthetic.
- J. C. Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), The Genius With The Inverted Torch

I've seen the future, brother; it is murder.
- Leonard Cohen, The Future

I see dead people.
- Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

Francisco Scaramanga: "You get as much pleasure out of killing as I do, so why don't you admit it?"
James Bond: "I admit killing you would be a pleasure."
- The Man With The Golden Gun

We may have days, we may have hours. But sooner or later, we all push up flowers...
- Membrillo, Grim Fandango

Everyone will come to my funeral to make sure that I stay dead.
- Marilyn Manson

I cannot seem to find my pulse, my temperature is down,
And I can tell I smell like Hell the way that people frown,
I feel like rigor mortis; all I do is set around,
You've got to help me, Frankenstein, I'm halfway in the ground ...
- Spider Robinson, Please, Dr. Frankenstein, from The Callahan Touch

You didn't often look into the eyes of someone who'd kill because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

[Rocket Man]

Thank you, Angel of Compilation! As a reward, here's one more to add for ol' Torchy:

Belial
"Playing with fire is bad for those who burn themselves. For the rest of us, it is a very great pleasure."
Honore de Balzac

[Rocket Man]

Novalis
"Joy is the serious business of Heaven."
--C.S. Lewis

[Rocket Man]

Beleth
"Terrified people do not want to be free, they want to be protected. If you can keep the people in a state of terror, you won't have to take away their freedom — they'll give it to you willingly. "
--Alden Loveshade

(Seemed especially appropriate for a fallen Cherub!)

[robkelk]

Novalis (or maybe Christopher)

Do not let life take away your joy. Your fun. Your smile. Your laugh. Don’t take it away from kids. And definitely don’t steal it from the adult that still has it. This world can be your prison or your playground. You can be miserable at the best party of all time or have fun in a cardboard box. Choose the box. Or choose to have fun at the party.
-Urban Samurai

[Rocket Man]

Kronos
"(U)nless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness... "
--Alexandre Dumas, "The Count of Monte Cristo."

[Rocket Man]

Beleth
"(I)f a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost."
--Lloyd Cassel Douglas, Magnificent Obsession

[robkelk]

Janus

There's this special biologist word we use for "stable". It's "dead".
- Jack Cohen