mythical-creatures

"A domesticated girl that's all you ask of me Darling it is no joke, this is lycanthropy Moon's awake now, with eyes wide open My body is craving, so feed the hungry."

"The silhouette was named for Etienne de Silhouette, the notoriously stingy finance minister for Louis XV, who ironically was himself incapable of casting a shadow, due to lycanthropy."

"It defies all logic that there is a population of these things sufficient to keep them going. What it takes to maintain any species, especially a long-lived species, is you gotta have a breeding population. That requires a substantial number, spread out over a fairly wide area where they can find sufficient food and shelter to keep hidden from all the investigators"

"You've probably heard the rumors before now. Everyone without the clearance level to know better wants to get their dig in. "Did you hear Sasquatch is an SCP? Are we gonna capture and contain Batboy next?" Yes. SCP-1000 is Bigfoot. I'm sure you've snickered. Don't worry. Contrary to rumors, we don't actually assign you to "Keter duty" for finding something humorous. You think Bigfoot is funny because we want you to think Bigfoot is funny. We've bankrolled Hollywood comedies and farcical documentaries, paid off men in gorilla suits, perpetrated hoaxes with bear prints and goat fur, bribed and brainwashed cartoonists to get especially silly depictions on children's television. Even the term "Bigfoot" comes from us, planted in the media in 1958, a term people would find even harder to take seriously than "Sasquatch"."

"At Bald Rock, 60 miles from Fresno, John Rose killed a grizzly bear which had been roaming about that region for nearly 15 years and was called "Bigfoot" by miners in that vicinity. It is estimated that he has killed 1,000 sheep in his time and has had many fights with Chinese sheep herders. He carried scars to show it, for when he was cut open seven bullets were found in his carcass. They had been fired into him in past years. He was killed in a canyon and could not be got out, but those who saw him estimated his weight at 2,000 pounds. His hide was a good load for two men to carry out. - San Fransisco Chronicle."

"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here."

"The only candidate I'd allow to play my music would be Bigfoot, and unless we're talking about foraging for squirrels, he's notoriously apolitical."

"Nearly twice the size of an ordinary grizzly, Bigfoot for years has levied his tribute of prime steers and no one has been found brave enough or clever enough to catch or kill him. With a single blow of his giant paw he kills the largest and best animal he can find and he usually takes the pick of a herd. He makes a single meal of the animal, and it is usually a meal that would provide a camp full of men for a week, and disappears, never to return to that locality again that season."

"Bigfoot was interviewed on The Patty Winters Show this morning and to my shock I found him surprisingly articulate and charming."

"The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not."

"Those who pass the gates of Barad-dûr do not return. But I would not lead you into Moria if there were no hope of coming out again. If there are Orcs there, it may prove ill for us, that is true. But most of the Orcs of the Misty Mountains were scattered or destroyed in the Battle of Five Armies. The Eagles report that Orcs are gathering again from afar; but there is a hope that Moria is still free."

"'I wonder when we'll find water again?' said Sam. 'But I suppose even over there they drink? Orcs drink, don't they?' 'Yes, they drink,' said Frodo. 'But do not let us speak of that. Such drink is not for us.'"

"'What has become of the miserable Orcs?' said Legolas. 'That, I think, no one will ever know,' said Gandalf."

"The Orcs reeled and screamed and cast aside both sword and spear. Like a black smoke driven by a mounting wind they fled. Wailing they passed under the waiting shadow of the trees; and from that shadow none ever came again."

"At last Aragorn stood above the great gates, heedless of the darts of the enemy. As he looked forth he saw the eastern sky grow pale. Then he raised his empty hand, palm outward in token of parley. The Orcs yelled and jeered. 'Come down! Come down!' they cried. 'If you wish to speak to us, come down! Bring out your king! We are the fighting Uruk-hai. We will fetch him from his hole, if he does not come. Bring out your skulking king!' 'The king stays or comes at his own will,' said Aragorn. 'Then what are you doing here?' they answered. 'Why do you look out? Do you wish to see the greatness of our army? We are the fighting Uruk-hai.' 'I looked out to see the dawn,' said Aragorn. 'What of the dawn?' they jeered. 'We are the Uruk-hai: we do not stop the fight for night or day, for fair weather or for storm. We come to kill, by sun or moon. What of the dawn?' 'None knows what the new day shall bring him,' said Aragorn. 'Get you gone, ere it turn to your evil.' 'Get down or we will shoot you from the wall,' they cried. 'This is no parley. You have nothing to say.' 'I still have this to say,' answered Aragorn. 'No enemy has yet taken the Hornburg. Depart, or not one of you will be spared. Not one will be left alive to take back tidings to the North. You do not know your peril.' So great a power and royalty was revealed in Aragorn, as he stood there alone above the ruined gates before the host of his enemies, that many of the wild men paused, and looked back over their shoulders to the valley, and some looked doubtfully at the sky. But the Orcs laughed with loud voices; and a hail of darts and arrows whistled over the wall, as Aragorn leaped down. There arose a roar and a blast of fire. The archway of the gate above which he had stood a moment before crumbled and crashed in smoke and dust. The barricade was scattered as if by a thunderbolt. Aragorn ran to the king's tower. But even as the gate fell, and the Orcs about it yelled, preparing to charge, a murmur arose behind them, like a wind in the distance, and it grew to a clamour of many voices crying strange news in the dawn. The Orcs upon the Rock, hearing the rumour of dismay, wavered and looked back. And then, sudden and terrible, from the tower above, the sound of the great horn of Helm rang out."

"The Orcs are in the Deep!"

"Orcs came with axes and cut down my trees."

"Let the Orcs come as thick as summer-moths round a candle!"

"'Who are you, and what are you doing in this land?' said the Rider, using the Common Speech of the West, in manner and tone like to the speech of Boromir, Man of Gondor. 'I am called Strider,' answered Aragorn. 'I came out of the North. I am hunting Orcs.' The Rider leaped from his horse. Giving his spear to another who rode up and dismounted at his side, he drew his sword and stood face to face with Aragorn, surveying him keenly, and not without wonder. At length he spoke again. 'At first I thought that you yourselves were Orcs,' he said; 'but now I see that it is not so. Indeed you know little of Orcs, if you go hunting them in this fashion. They were swift and well-armed, and they were many. You would have changed from hunters to prey, if ever you had overtaken them.'"

"'The Orcs have run before us, as if the very whips of Sauron were behind them.'"

"'Surely even Orcs must pause on the march?' said Gimli. 'Seldom will Orcs journey in the open under the sun, yet these have done so,' said Legolas. 'Certainly they will not rest by night.'"

"Enemies of the Orcs are likely to be our friends."

"Orcs travel fast."

"It was dark, but not too dark for the night-eyes of Orcs."

"Orcs were as keen as hounds on a scent, it was said, but they could also climb."

"You must dig swift and deep, if you wish to hide from Orcs."

"Orcs will often pursue foes for many leagues into the plain, if they have a fallen captain to avenge."

"There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world."

"Isildur was marching north along the east banks of the River, and near the Gladden Fields he was waylaid by the Orcs of the Mountains, and almost all his folk were slain. He leaped into the waters, but the Ring slipped from his finger as he swam, and then the Orcs saw him and killed him with arrows."

"I think for many young girls, there's a fantasy that someday you will be recognized as the secretly beautiful, magical thing that you are. The unicorn will be attracted to something ineffable about you, secret from the rest of the world."

"No matter what, I suspect that the unicorn will always be with us. He might retreat deep into the forest in order to escape all the hoopla surrounding him today, and we may have to look harder and be more sincere in the future if we want to find him. But we'll continue searching for this Holy Grail of the animal world just as we have for millennia, and, ultimately, I believe that we'll find his glory deep within ourselves."

"I suppose I could not understand it if women had simply forgotten unicorns or if they had changed so that they loved all unicorns now and tried to save them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to feel them and sense something else — what do they look like to one another, then? A beast? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?"

"Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."

"I am the only Unicorn there is? The Last? … That cannot be. Why would I be the last? What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. We do not vanish. … There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon! We can be hunted, trapped; we can even be killed if we leave our forests, but we do not vanish. … Am I truly the last?"

"The Unicorn Sonata … tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes — and our ears — to find it."

"A Chinese prose writer has observed that the unicorn, because of its own anomaly, will pass unnoticed. Our eyes see what they are accustomed to seeing."

"It is universally held that the unicorn is a supernatural being and of auspicious omen; so say the odes, the annals, the biographies of worthies, and other texts whose authority is unimpeachable. Even village women and children know that the unicorn is a lucky sign. But this animal does not figure among the barnyard animals, it is not always easy to come across, it does not lend itself to zoological classification. Nor is it like the horse or bull, the wolf or deer. In such circumstances we may be face to face with a unicorn and not know for sure that we are. We know that a certain animal with a mane is a horse and that a certain animal with horns is a bull. We do not know what the unicorn looks like."

"I don't want to talk about the texts or the class. We can do that another time. I just want to know the last time you saw a unicorn and do you still believe in primeval forests."

"Billy lowered his head and ran, headlong, at the unicorn, as if he were about to butt it with his forehead. The unicorn lowered its head also, and Billy the Innkeeper met his unfortunate end."

"She had a unicorn to protect her. Now I have the unicorn's head, and I will bring it back with me, for it's long enough since we had fresh ground unicorn's horn in our arts."

"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"

"I agree that clouds often look like other things — fish and unicorns and men on horseback — but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on."

"If even one Unicorn walks the Earth my power is not complete."

"You know what they call a unicorn without a horn? A freaking horse."

"When a pony does a good deed, he gets a horn and he becomes a unicorn and poops out cotton candy until he forgets he’s magical and then his horn falls off. Black unicorns become zebras."

"I'm also a unicorn. Maybe a bi-corn. Either way, I'm starting to believe in my own magic."

"Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features."

"Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix At this hour reigning there."

"Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. "The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; he was now browsing among the tulips."

"If you herald some turn in our fortunes, if you bring us some measure of grace — thanks, unicorn … And even if you do not, thanks for the brightness of your company at a dark time."