All Quotes

""But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!" Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things: what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own."

""But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?" I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, "Roses! Boil them, or we won't have them!" My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them. So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him."

"If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly. The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must — he cannot help himself — become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed. If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain."

"We are often unable to tell people what they need to know because they want to know something else."

"That which is in a man, not that which lies beyond his vision is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event."

"Come, come to Him who made thy heart; Come weary and oppressed; To come to Jesus is thy part; His part, to give thee rest."

"All is loss that comes between us and Christ."

"Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken."

"God Himself — His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto lead us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes — for it is but an outward change — will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all."

"Teenage girls with no life experiences and boys who call themselves punk are on my radio singing about how much pain they've endured and how hard their lives are"

"I'm not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth the greatest democracy the world has ever known."

"Do what you think's right, JC. Only listen to your own conscience."

"My vision is augmented."

"Well, since that makes you my new boss, take a long look at Manderley's dead body. Consider that my resignation; I don't have time to write a letter."

"When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror."

"You mechs may have copper wiring to reroute your fear of pain, but I've got nerves of steel."

"I never had time to take the Oath of Service to the Coalition. How about this one? I swear not to rest until UNATCO is free of you and the other crooked bureaucrats who have perverted its mission."

"Call me nostalgic, but the nightlife seems to have lost its old charm."

"Some gang-banger, maybe you should think about going back to school."

"Bravery is not a function of firepower."

"Human beings may not be perfect, but a computer program with language synthesis is hardly the answer to the world's problems."

"Every war is the result of a difference of opinion. Maybe the biggest questions can only be answered by the greatest of conflicts."

"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"

"You've got ten seconds to beat it before I add you to the list of NSF casualties."

"What a shame. [said after NPC Gilbert Renton dies. JC says this even if he caused Renton's death]"

"A forgotten virtue like honesty is worth at least twenty credits."

"I'm not big into books."

"This isn't a training exercise, JC. Your targets will be human beings. Keep that in mind."

"I'm like the Russian researcher who contracted his own virus. They want to study the way I die."

"One can be too self-sufficient, I'm coming to believe."

"A few bureaucrats in New York can't make good decisions for New Jersey, let alone Paris or a village in China."

"Somehow the notion of unalienable liberty got lost. It's really become a question of what liberties will the state assign to individuals or rather, what liberties we will have the strength to cling to."

"The wealthy have always been the ones to profit from one-world government."

"It's only a matter of time before someone clever and ambitious figures out that the tools of dictatorship have been ready-made by well meaning governments all over the world."

"A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving."

"I see you; a thief on the roof. My new satellite link has both infrared and the x-ray spectrum. I see your heart beating. I see you are afraid."

"You are a small, prowling mouse... and dumb like a mouse! You keep coming, like you forget about Agent Navarre. I remember Agent Navarre. I remember for everyone."

"Again they ignore me. Again they think they have a better punishment for a traitor than a shotgun to the head."

"No, I cannot forgive! No... not the killing of Agent Navarre! I will follow you - Denton, I will get you!"

"I am the top agent at UNATCO. It is different now. Mr. Simons said if I defeat you I can have any upgrades I want. That is a gentlemen's agreement."

"No, I wanted orange! It gave me lemon-lime"

"You were just a prototype, Denton, a prototype for me."

"Bet you didn't know your mom and dad tried to protest when we put you in training. They loved their little boy, JC, and that's why they're dead. I'm sending up the man who did the job."

"Chaz Healy - Concert-goer"

"Meat Loaf - Tiny"

"Frank DiLeo - rock promoter Frankie "Mr. Big" Sharp"

"Ed O'Neill - Glen"

"Mike Hagerty - Davy"

"Frederick Coffin - Officer Koharski"

"Donna Dixon - Garth's dream woman"