Loki > Loki's Quotes

“[...] for a crown is a pitiless master, harsher than the staff of a pig-keeper; while a staff bears up, a crown weighs down, beyond the strength of any man to wear it lightly.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“Dagda’s goblin: “Oh now, boy, we’re not ‘ere to talk about me. It’s _you_, boy. Who are _you_? What’s _your_ name?”
Hellboy, quietly: ” … Anung Un Rama …”
Dagda’s goblin: “PHAA! That’s just words, boy. What do they mean?”
Hellboy: “I don’t know.”
Dagda’s goblin: “Anung Un Rama. World Destroyer. The Great Beast …”
Dagda: ” ‘And upon his brow is set a crown of fire …’ ”
Sir Edward Grey: “Is that who you are?”
Hellboy: “I … … No.”
Dagda’s goblin: “Well, then, boy, it’s not your name, is it?”
― Mike Mignola, Hellboy, Vol. 4: The Right Hand of Doom

“Since the day she threw me into her dungeon, I've noticed something unfriendly about her.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“Then you're... _Pinocchio_?"
"In the flesh. As opposed to the Norwegian pine."
"What was that like? I mean, the change. What did it feel like?"
"To be honest, not as big a deal as I was expecting. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's great not to have to worry about dry rot and termites. But the rest... meh."
"Being human is meh?"
"Mostly."
"But you were a puppet!"
"What, you think flesh-and-blood kids don't come with strings attached? Clearly, you don't know many parents."
"No. Just the one, really."
"And you spent your whole life trying to make him proud of you?"
"Well, yes. But -"
"There you go, pal. Now you see the strings.”
― Mike Carey, The Unwritten, Vol. 9: The Unwritten Fables

“Who killed Thursby?’

Spade said: ‘I don’t know.’

Bryan rubbed his black eyeglass-ribbon between thumb and fingers and said knowingly: ‘Perhaps you don’t, but you certainly could make an excellent guess.’

‘Maybe, but I wouldn’t.’

The District Attorney raised his eyebrows.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Spade repeated. He was serene. ‘My guess might be excellent or it might be crummy, but Mrs Spade didn’t raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a District Attorney, an Assistant District Attorney, and a stenographer.’

‘Why shouldn’t you, if you’ve nothing to conceal?’

‘Everybody,’ Spade responded mildly, ‘has something to conceal.’

‘And you have – ?’

‘My guesses, for one thing.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

“It is beyond any man’s wisdom to judge the secret heart of another,” he said, “for in it are good and evil mixed.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: ‘this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty’. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: ‘this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy’; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“[H]istory viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is a deadly danger of winning”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Off with you" is a phrase used by people who lack the curtesy to say something more polite, such as, "if there's nothing else you require I must be going" or "I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you to leave, please" or even "excuse me but I believe you have mistaken my home for your own and my valuable belongings for yours and I must ask you to return the items in question to me and leave my home after untying me from this chair, as I'm unable to do it myself, if it's not too much trouble.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

“Why should not God have come to the earth as an earth-worm? There are a great many more worms than men, and they do a great deal more good.”
― T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

“It is harsh enough for each man to bear his own wound. But he who leads bears the wounds of all who follow him.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“Merlyn, […] was a staunch conservative – which was rather progressive of him, when you reflect that he was living backwards”
― T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

“Chain! Chain you! What! Run you not, then,
just where you please, and when?”
“Not always, sir; but what of that?”
“Enough for me, to spoil your fat!
It ought to be a precious price
which could to servile chains entice;
for me, I’ll shun them while I’ve wit.”
So ran Sir Wolf, and runneth yet.”
― Jean de la Fontaine, Le loup dans les fables - La Fontaine - 2

“If I were to be made a knight," said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, "I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it."

"That would be extremely presumptuous of you," said Merlyn, "and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it."

"I shouldn't mind."

"Wouldn't you? Wait till it happens and see."

"Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?"

"Oh dear," said Merlyn. '"You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?"

"I don't think that is an answer at all," replied the Wart, justly.

Merlyn wrung his hands.

"Well, anyway," he said, "suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?"

"I could ask," said the Wart.

"You could ask," repeated Merlyn.

He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically into the fire, and began to munch it fiercely.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“If you are ever forced to take a chemistry class, you will probably see, at the front of the classroom, a large chart divided into squares, with different numbers and letters in each of them. This chart is called the table of elements, and scientists like to say that it contains all the substances that make up our world. Like everyone else, scientists are wrong from time to time, and it is easy to see that they are wrong about the table of elements. Because although this table contains a great many elements, from the element oxygen, which is found in the air, to the element of aluminum, which is found in cans of soda, the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise. The element of surprise is not a gas like oxygen, or a solid, like aluminum. The element of surprise is an unfair advantage, and it can be found in situations in which one person has sneaked up on another. The surprised person - or, in this sad case, the surprised person - are too stunned to defend themselves and the sneaky person has the advantage of the element of surprise.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator

“Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on. He went among the villagers and blipped them on the head.”
― A.A. Milne, The Complete Tales & Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

“Finally, one of the biggest mice spoke.
‘Is there nothing we can do,’ it asked, ‘to repay you for saving the life of our Queen?’
‘Nothing that I know of,’ answered the Woodman; but the Scarecrow, who had been trying to think, but could not because his head was stuffed with straw, said, quickly, ‘Oh, yes; you can save our friend, the Cowardly Lion, who is asleep in the poppy bed.”
― Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

“The only thing that will be born here will be scientific understanding. And the only thing that will die will be myth and superstition.”
“Myth will never die. It is the deepest kind of understanding.”
― James Gurney, Dinotopia: The World Beneath

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“And Zeus said: “Hera, you can choose some other time for paying your visit to Oceanus — for the present let us devote ourselves to love and to the enjoyment of one another. Never yet have I been so overpowered by passion neither for goddess nor mortal woman as I am at this moment for yourself — not even when I was in love with the wife of Ixion who bore me Pirithoüs, peer of gods in counsel, nor yet with Danaë, the daintly ankled daughter of Acrisius, who bore me the famed hero Perseus. Then there was the daughter of Phonenix, who bore me Minos and Rhadamanthus. There was Semele, and Alcmena in Thebes by whom I begot my lion-hearted son Heracles, while Samele became mother to Bacchus, the comforter of mankind. There was queen Demeter again, and lovely Leto, and yourself — but with none of these was I ever so much enamored as I now am with you.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Lady, I was gonna cut you some slack, 'cause you're a major mythological figure...but now you've just gone nuts!”
― Mike Mignola, Hellboy, Vol. 2: Wake the Devil

“But there’s my mother. I’ve got to go back and look after her. I just left her with Mrs. Cooper, and it’s not fair on either of them.”

“But it’s not fair on you to have to do that.”

“No,” he said, “but that’s a different sort of not fair. That’s just like an earthquake or a rainstorm. It might not be fair, but no one’s to blame. But if I just leave my mother with an old lady who isn’t very well herself, then that’s a different kind of not fair. That would be wrong.

Philip Pullman. His Dark Materials Omnibus (Kindle Locations 17001-17005). Random House Children's Books. Kindle Edition.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“I’m only an ignorant aëronaut. I’m so damn ignorant I believed it when I was told that shamans had the gift of flight, for example. Yet here’s a shaman who hasn’t.”

“Oh, but I have.”

“How d’you make that out?”

The balloon was drifting lower, and the ground was rising. […]

“I needed to fly,” said Grumman, “so I summoned you, and here I am, flying.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

“For you are the heir of the ages. You have not to grope after the dazzling brilliance of invention of the free adjective, to which all human language has not yet fully attained. You may say

green sun
or dead life

and set the imagination leaping.
Language has both strengthened imagination and been freed by it. Who shall say whether the free adjective has created images bizarre and beautiful, or the adjective been freed by strange and beautiful pictures in the mind?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose – an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king – that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not – unless it was built before our time.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“[O]ne must feel a grave disquiet, when the legitimate inspiration is not there; when the subject or topic of ‘research’ is imposed, or is ‘found’ for a candidate out of someone else’s bag of curiosities, or is thought by a committee to be a sufficient exercise for a degree. Whatever may have been found useful in other spheres, there is a distinction between accepting the willing labour of many humble persons in building an English house and the erection of a pyramid with the sweat of degree-slaves.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“In any case, the expression ‘real life’ in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more ‘alive’ than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more ‘real’ than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!

For my part, I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley station is more ‘real’ than the clouds. And as an artefact I find it less inspiring than the legendary dome of heaven. The bridge to platform 4 is to me less interesting than Bifröst guarded by Heimdall with the Gjallarhorn. From the wildness of my heart I cannot exclude the question whether railway-engineers, if they had been brought up on more fantasy, might not have done better with all their abundant means than they commonly do.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“For he who seizes a tyranny and does not kill Brutus, and he who sets a state free and does not kill Brutus' sons, maintains himself but a little while.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses

“A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”
― George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones