Quotes Archive
As this is a non-competitive challenge community, all members are free to write not only for the current prompts, but also any past prompts that strike their fancy. We've taken a moment to gather up all of the previous prompts here at the community, so that you may look through them.
If you'd like to write for one of them, great! =) We welcome any and all interpretations of the prompts.
This post will also be updated each month, as a new set of quotes is introduced, so feel free to bookmark it. It will also be linked to the community sidebar.
Instructions for posting & tagging are included for each month, as this community has gone through a few different formats in its lifetime :)
If you would like to write for one of the following prompts, please TAG YOUR POSTS WITH YOUR PENNAME AND THE APPROPRIATE MONTH/YEAR.
February 2008
"Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes." - Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 11-07-05
March 2008
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." - Helen Keller
"We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have." - Publilius Syrus
"We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more." - Madame Swetchine
April 2008
"The only devils in this world are those running around in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought." - Mahatma Gandhi
"No Passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." - Edward Burke
"It's a lot like nature. You only have as many animals as the ecosystem can support and you only have as many friends as you can tolerate the bitching of." - Randy Milholland
"They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm." - Dorothy Parker
May 2008
"I told him that if he does not stop this nonsense immediately, I shall hang him up by his heels and chop him in half." - Alone in the Dark (1982 version)
"It is said that if you move a single pebble on the beach, you set up a different pattern, and everything in the world is changed. It can also be said that love can change the future, if it is deep enough, true enough, and selfless enough. It can prevent a war, prohibit a plague, keep the whole world... whole." - The Outer Limits
"Why is it that every time I think I know the answers, someone goes and changes the questions?" - The X-Files
"It is truth, but truth is not always appearance." - Sleepy Hollow
"Never! No-one will serve a man who has sold his soul to the demons!" - Onimusha 2
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired. . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker;
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. - T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode? - Langston Hughes, "A Dream Deferred"
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France
"I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope." - Aeschylus, 525-456 BC. From Agamemnon.
"The surest poison is time." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
June 2008
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his
youthful joys,
Tho' the deep hart of existence beat for ever like a
boy's?
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on
the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and
more. - Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, "Locksley Hall"
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"
"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
"Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond reach of proof." - Khalil Gibran
"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence." - Sholem Asch
"What is food to one, is to others bitter poison." - Lucretius
~*~
If you would like to write for one of the following prompts, please TAG YOUR POSTS WITH YOUR PENNAME AND THE APPROPRIATE MONTH/YEAR/WEEK.
May 2009
Week 1: "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up." -Dizzy Dean
Week 2: "Swallow your pride occasionally, it's non-fattening!" - anonymous
Week 3: "There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you." - A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture
Week 4: Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where'er they went;
Trampled and beaten where they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Oxford Book of American Verse)
June 2009
Week 1: If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Week 2: We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Week 3: Everybody's at war with different things... I'm at war with my own heart sometimes. - Tupac Shakur
Week 4: Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool? - Nursery Rhyme
July 2009
Week 1: Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love. - Jareb Teague
Week 2: Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief. - William Faulkner
Week 3: Nature's first green is gold,/Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower/But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf./So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day./Nothing Gold can stay. - Robert Frost
Week 4: The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. - Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
August 2009
Week 1: Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln
Week 2: Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. - Anne Frank
Week 3: One good thing at least about some
Of these junkies was
They had some character - Iggy Pop, Character
Week 4: It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered. -Aeschylus
September 2009
Week 1: I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line. - Elvis Presley
Week 2: Hardly education
All them books I didn’t read
They just sat there on my shelf
Looking much smarter than me - Modest Mouse, Education
Week 3: Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. - Robert Frost
Week 4: A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. - George Santayana
October 2009
Week 1: Where there is no imagination there is no horror. - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.
Week 2: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear. - Umberto Eco
Week 3: Hold on, man. We don't go anywhere with "scary," "spooky," "haunted," or "forbidden" in the title. - Shaggy, Scooby-Doo
Week 4: You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer
November 2009
Week 1: A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. - Lao Tzu
Week 2: The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. - Henry Boye
Week 3: In school, I could hear the leaves rustle and go on a journey. - Clint Eastwood
Week 4: We were strangers on a crazy adventure
Never dreaming, how our dreams would come true
Now here we stand, unafraid of the future
At the beginning with you - Donna Lewis, At The Beginning
January 2010
Week 1: Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Week 2: We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. - William Ewart Gladstone
Week 3: Peace Sells but Who's Buying? - Megadeath
Week 4: An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
March 2010
Week 1: You’re only in trouble if you get caught! - Aladdin, Disney’s Aladdin
Week 2: “I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Week 3: Do you feel lucky, punk? - Dirty Harry
Week 4: Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. - R.E. Shay
April 2010
Week 1: You can't fix stupid. - Ron White
Week 2: A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. - Roald Dahl
Week 3: WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness. - Ellie Katz
Week 4: Many a true word is spoken in jest. - English Proverb
June 2010
Week 1: No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. - Aesop, The Lion and The Mouse
Week 2: It's not a slam at you when people are rude - it's a slam at the people they've met before. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Week 3: What can I say? I was raised by wolves. - The Wolf, Hoodwinked
Week 4: Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy. - Ambrose Bierce,
July 2010
Week 1: A boy is easier cheated than an old lady. - Welsh proverb
Week 2: Age considers; youth ventures. - Rabindranath Tagore
Week 3: Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got
to start young. - Theodore Roosevelt
Week 4: Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. - Author Unknown
August 2010
Week 1: Love risks degenerating into obsession; friendship is never anything but sharing. - Elie Wiesel
Week 2: I want what makes you happy, not what makes me happy. - Fry, Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
Week 3: It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. - William Blake
Week 4: Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little. - E.W. Howe
September 2010
Week 1: Suffering is nothing. It's all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering. - Alphonse Daudet
Week 2: Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success. - Author Unknown
Week 3: In union there is strength. - Aesop
Week 4: We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it - Billy Joel
You are also welcome to pick up a banner for your efforts! Unfortunately, the very first banners have been lost, but the ones for May 2008 onwards are still intact.
Please remember to upload your banner to your own webspace - not hotlinking, please!
If you take one of the following banners, please credit minerva-one:
May 2008:
June 2008:
The following banner sets are available for customization. Please see this post for more details.
Please credit luxken27 if taken.
May 2009:
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
January 2010
March 2010
April 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
If you'd like to write for one of them, great! =) We welcome any and all interpretations of the prompts.
This post will also be updated each month, as a new set of quotes is introduced, so feel free to bookmark it. It will also be linked to the community sidebar.
Instructions for posting & tagging are included for each month, as this community has gone through a few different formats in its lifetime :)
If you would like to write for one of the following prompts, please TAG YOUR POSTS WITH YOUR PENNAME AND THE APPROPRIATE MONTH/YEAR.
February 2008
"Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes." - Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 11-07-05
March 2008
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." - Helen Keller
"We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have." - Publilius Syrus
"We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more." - Madame Swetchine
April 2008
"The only devils in this world are those running around in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought." - Mahatma Gandhi
"No Passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." - Edward Burke
"It's a lot like nature. You only have as many animals as the ecosystem can support and you only have as many friends as you can tolerate the bitching of." - Randy Milholland
"They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm." - Dorothy Parker
May 2008
"I told him that if he does not stop this nonsense immediately, I shall hang him up by his heels and chop him in half." - Alone in the Dark (1982 version)
"It is said that if you move a single pebble on the beach, you set up a different pattern, and everything in the world is changed. It can also be said that love can change the future, if it is deep enough, true enough, and selfless enough. It can prevent a war, prohibit a plague, keep the whole world... whole." - The Outer Limits
"Why is it that every time I think I know the answers, someone goes and changes the questions?" - The X-Files
"It is truth, but truth is not always appearance." - Sleepy Hollow
"Never! No-one will serve a man who has sold his soul to the demons!" - Onimusha 2
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired. . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker;
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. - T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode? - Langston Hughes, "A Dream Deferred"
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France
"I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope." - Aeschylus, 525-456 BC. From Agamemnon.
"The surest poison is time." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
June 2008
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his
youthful joys,
Tho' the deep hart of existence beat for ever like a
boy's?
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on
the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and
more. - Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, "Locksley Hall"
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"
"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
"Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond reach of proof." - Khalil Gibran
"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence." - Sholem Asch
"What is food to one, is to others bitter poison." - Lucretius
~*~
If you would like to write for one of the following prompts, please TAG YOUR POSTS WITH YOUR PENNAME AND THE APPROPRIATE MONTH/YEAR/WEEK.
May 2009
Week 1: "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up." -Dizzy Dean
Week 2: "Swallow your pride occasionally, it's non-fattening!" - anonymous
Week 3: "There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you." - A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture
Week 4: Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where'er they went;
Trampled and beaten where they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Oxford Book of American Verse)
June 2009
Week 1: If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Week 2: We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Week 3: Everybody's at war with different things... I'm at war with my own heart sometimes. - Tupac Shakur
Week 4: Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool? - Nursery Rhyme
July 2009
Week 1: Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love. - Jareb Teague
Week 2: Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief. - William Faulkner
Week 3: Nature's first green is gold,/Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower/But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf./So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day./Nothing Gold can stay. - Robert Frost
Week 4: The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. - Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
August 2009
Week 1: Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln
Week 2: Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. - Anne Frank
Week 3: One good thing at least about some
Of these junkies was
They had some character - Iggy Pop, Character
Week 4: It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered. -Aeschylus
September 2009
Week 1: I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line. - Elvis Presley
Week 2: Hardly education
All them books I didn’t read
They just sat there on my shelf
Looking much smarter than me - Modest Mouse, Education
Week 3: Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. - Robert Frost
Week 4: A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. - George Santayana
October 2009
Week 1: Where there is no imagination there is no horror. - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.
Week 2: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear. - Umberto Eco
Week 3: Hold on, man. We don't go anywhere with "scary," "spooky," "haunted," or "forbidden" in the title. - Shaggy, Scooby-Doo
Week 4: You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer
November 2009
Week 1: A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. - Lao Tzu
Week 2: The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. - Henry Boye
Week 3: In school, I could hear the leaves rustle and go on a journey. - Clint Eastwood
Week 4: We were strangers on a crazy adventure
Never dreaming, how our dreams would come true
Now here we stand, unafraid of the future
At the beginning with you - Donna Lewis, At The Beginning
January 2010
Week 1: Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Week 2: We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. - William Ewart Gladstone
Week 3: Peace Sells but Who's Buying? - Megadeath
Week 4: An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
March 2010
Week 1: You’re only in trouble if you get caught! - Aladdin, Disney’s Aladdin
Week 2: “I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Week 3: Do you feel lucky, punk? - Dirty Harry
Week 4: Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. - R.E. Shay
April 2010
Week 1: You can't fix stupid. - Ron White
Week 2: A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. - Roald Dahl
Week 3: WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness. - Ellie Katz
Week 4: Many a true word is spoken in jest. - English Proverb
June 2010
Week 1: No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. - Aesop, The Lion and The Mouse
Week 2: It's not a slam at you when people are rude - it's a slam at the people they've met before. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Week 3: What can I say? I was raised by wolves. - The Wolf, Hoodwinked
Week 4: Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy. - Ambrose Bierce,
July 2010
Week 1: A boy is easier cheated than an old lady. - Welsh proverb
Week 2: Age considers; youth ventures. - Rabindranath Tagore
Week 3: Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got
to start young. - Theodore Roosevelt
Week 4: Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. - Author Unknown
August 2010
Week 1: Love risks degenerating into obsession; friendship is never anything but sharing. - Elie Wiesel
Week 2: I want what makes you happy, not what makes me happy. - Fry, Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
Week 3: It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. - William Blake
Week 4: Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little. - E.W. Howe
September 2010
Week 1: Suffering is nothing. It's all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering. - Alphonse Daudet
Week 2: Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success. - Author Unknown
Week 3: In union there is strength. - Aesop
Week 4: We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it - Billy Joel
You are also welcome to pick up a banner for your efforts! Unfortunately, the very first banners have been lost, but the ones for May 2008 onwards are still intact.
Please remember to upload your banner to your own webspace - not hotlinking, please!
If you take one of the following banners, please credit minerva-one:
May 2008:
June 2008:
The following banner sets are available for customization. Please see this post for more details.
Please credit luxken27 if taken.
May 2009:
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
January 2010
March 2010
April 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010