I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too

Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It’s pretty cool to see.

  • Norspang@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    1 year ago

    “The spaceships hung in the air, in much the same ways that bricks don’t” - Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy

    I use this quote a lot when doing D&D Campaign prepping. It’s a fantastic example of a non-sensical sentence that somehow completely explains the subject

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      I often think of this one as well.

      It parses fine really; there is a (possibly empty) set of things that hang in the air, and the spaceship is one of them, but bricks are not. It’s not nonsensical, it’s just a creative twist on a common idiom (“in much the same way a brick does”) that’s so unexpected it seems silly.

      I also think of the later books where Arthur perfects the art of falling and missing the ground, sometimes.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      Some of my favourite Douglas Adams ones:

      Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

      The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

      For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

      God’s Final Message to His Creation: 'We apologize for the inconvenience."

      Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

      It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.’