Great Quotes I Like

These are quotes related to what I am trying to accomplish with my writing.“There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall—all stories are ultimately about the fall—at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”
–-J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters

"The gods of yesterday become the devils of tomorrow."
--Robert E. Howard, "Black Colossus"

"When the gods wish to punish wicked men for their crimes, they allow them for a time a more than usual prosperity and an even longer impunity, so that they will suffer all the more bitterly when their fortunes are reversed"
--Julius Caesar, Gallic War Commentaries

“All the Greeks knew what was the right thing to do, but the Spartans were the only ones that did it.”
--Xenophon

"When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in ... Who will be our invaders? From whence will they come?"
--Robert E. Howard, Letters

"Imagination is infinite"
--Me on twitter

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
--Invictus - by William Emest Henley


(thanks to Mike K. at the BioHazardBlog for introducing me to that last poem. I love it, because it captures that fierce indomitable will I hope to exemplify.)