The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => The Prince of Nothing => The Darkness That Comes Before => Topic started by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:54:22 pm

Title: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:54:22 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
Looking for people to help immortalize some of Bakker's more interesting quotes from each book, so I am making this and similar topics for each book. There is the site, called wikiquotes, that is essentially for quoting your author, so Truth Shines' idea was that we could compile a large list of quotes and make a pretty epic page for Bakker.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._Scott_Bakker

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Second_Apocalypse

If you'd like to see any quotes added, post them here and me or someone else will hopefully get around to putting them up on the wiki. Also, if possible, provide the page number, who said it, and the edition (including country).
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:54:55 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
"Things holy ... became mere versions of things unholy ... as though the words "holy" and "unholy" were as easily exchanged as seats at a gaming table. And the recent simply became a more tawdry repetition of the ancient."
Drusas Achamian, Page 39 (USA Paperback edition)

"Achamian had crisscrossed the Three Seas, had seen many of those things that had once made his stomach flutter with supernatural dread, and he knew now that childhood stories were always better"
Drusas Achamian, Page 39 (USA Paperback edition)

"Avarice, it seemed to him, was the world's only dimension."
Drusas Achamian, Page 39 (USA Paperback edition)

"There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others ."
Drusas Achamian, Page 43 (USA Paperback edition)

"Above all the mighty detest change"
Drusas Achamian, Page 57 (USA Paperback edition)

"Answers are like opium: the more you imbibe, the more you need. Which is why the sober man finds solace in mystery."
Ikurei Conphas, Page 190 (USA Paperback edition)

"War is intellect"
Ikurei Conphas, Page 190 (USA Paperback edition)

"Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurrence."
Cnaiur, Page 191 (USA Paperback edition)

" 'But measure' the slave replies 'is not something accomplished and then forgotten, Skiotha. Old measure is merely grounds for the new. Measure is unceasing."
'The Slave', Page 192 (USA Paperback edition)

"Complicity makes unforgettable, carves scenes with unbearable clarity, as though the extent of condemnation is to be found in the precision of detail."
Cnaiur, Page 192 (USA Paperback edition)

"With his own feet, the dead chased him."
Cnaiur, Page 193 (USA Paperback edition)

"The young can never see life for what it is: a knife's edge, as thing as the breaths that measure it. What gives it depth isn't memory. I've memories enough for ten men, and yet my days are as thin and as shadowy as the greased linen the poor stretch over their windows. No, what gives life depth is the future. Without a future, without a horizon of promise or threat, our lives have no meaning. Only the future is real"
Skeaos, Page 240 (USA Paperback edition)

"He wondered whether the old drab had taken Skeaos as a lover. Likely, he concluded, and winced at the accompanying image. Like a prune fucking a twig, he thought"
Ikurei Conphas, Page 240 (USA Paperback edition)

"There was something curiously pathetic, he thought, about the notion of the man plotting with his grandmother, like two beggars sneering at those too poor to give more than coppers."
Ikurei Conphas, Page 241 (USA Paperback edition)

"Stupid men, Conphas had found, tended to be excessively proud of their few brilliant moments."
Ikurei Conphas, Page 246 (USA Paperback edition)

"In desperate times, Cnaiur knew, men rationed nothing so jealously as tolerance, They were more strict in their interpretations of custom and less forgiving of uncommon things"
Cnaiur, Page 369 (USA Paperback edition)
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:55:28 pm
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: chapter eight
For an instant, Conphas felt like a thief, the hidden author of a great loss. And the exhilaration he felt almost possessed a sexual intensity. He saw clearly now why he so loved this species of war. On the field of battle, his every act was open to the scrutiny of others. Here, however, he stood outside scrutiny, enacted destiny from a place that transcended judgment or recrimination. He lay hidden in the womb of events.

Like a God.
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 252). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Quote from: chapter nine
Often, in his soul's eye, she was inexplicably thin and wild, buffeted by rain and winds, obscured by the swaying of forest branches. This woman, who had once lifted her hand to the sun, holding it so that for him its light lay cupped in her palm, and telling him that truth was air, was sky, and could only be claimed, never touched by the limbs and fingers of a man. He couldn't tell her how profoundly her musings affected him, that they thrashed like living things in the wells of his soul and gathered stones about them.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 266). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

The latter might be one of my favorite pieces of writing of RSB's
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:55:42 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
*gasp* a reply!

those are good, I'll put them up later this week, though could you add who is talking or the POV?

Also, the RSB "Person Page" is 'finished'. Or at least I'm more or less done with it. If anyone would like to make it prettier, would like to add anything, or would like to change the sample quotes, please feel free.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:55:51 pm
Quote from: lockesnow
Conphas and Achamian, respectively.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:56:08 pm
Quote from: lockesnow
The ruins were far too old to contradict the forest outright. They had been submerged, worn and unbalanced by ages of its weight. Sheltered in mossy hollows, walls breached earthen mounds, only to suddenly end, as though restrained by vines that wrapped them like great veins over bone.
- AK
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 8). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

“Weeping may muddy the face... but it does cleanse the heart.”
- Leweth
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 15). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Smoky dreams. Dreams drawn from the sheath.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 46). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Ink might be immortal, but meaning was not.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 51). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

“Zealots holding out redemption in one hand to draw attention away from the whip in the other. Sooner or later, everyone sees the whip.”
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 57). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Faith may die, but her sentiments remain eternal.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 58). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

He held the word in his mouth, as though it were a morsel of questionable food.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 63). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 01:56:19 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
lots of quotes about time. very nice.
love the last one.

it seems that the wikiquote people dont much like my formatting... which i thought i copied from another page pretty exactly but whatever.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on September 30, 2013, 03:30:51 pm
"It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing."
give your vision, how  you do comprehend this statement !please!
we are having trouble in interpreting  it to other language...
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Wilshire on September 30, 2013, 04:22:31 pm
There are others here that are more versed in language then myself, but I'll give it a try anyway. It will probably be more confusing after I'm done  :P

I think this sentence is mostly just a play on words so that it would sound cool when read (in english) and reflect the title
Break it into its two parts

1) It is only after that we understand what has come before
2) Then we understand nothing


First part:
"What has come before" is just a phrase used to describe the past. So it means the same thing as:

"It is only after that we understand the past"
This sentence basically states that you can only fully understand the past after it has happened.

That is saying that while you can predict probable outcomes very accurately, you can never be 100% sure what will happen until after it has happened. The general idea is that nothing is certain with 100% probability. After all, the probability that you will win the lottery is essentially 0, and yet people do still win.

The second part:
"Then we understand nothing"

This can be taken with the first half to generally say that there are times that something occurs that is unpredictable or unlikely. There was no way to forecast that an unlikely event would take place before it happened.



You could then re-write the old sentence to say something like this:

"The future cannot be predicted with absolute certainly, it is only upon reflecting on the past that events can truly be predicted (up until the present). But, since you are only reading history rather than predicting it, you are forecasting nothing, and thus you understand nothing."

I doubt this will be much help but I tried   :)
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on September 30, 2013, 09:11:04 pm
Wilshire did a decent job.

The actual quotation is "if," by the way.

If it is only after (something has occurred) that we understand what has come before (, that is, what actually happened when it actually occurred), then we (can) understand nothing (in the moment when things are actually happening).
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on September 30, 2013, 09:32:48 pm
 Spasibo(thank you guys),  btw ,Madness,  that "if" thing has helped a lot ))
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on September 30, 2013, 09:37:25 pm
No worries, tekne :).
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on September 30, 2013, 09:50:21 pm
..in connection with the next statement 'Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything'  (hope no little smth is missing here):)
we shall comprehend it ,so that if something that happened was understood before or simultaneously , then it was possible to accomplish by means of "soul vision" (like 'buddhi' of Patanjali darshana)only;  -thus we can define the soul as follows: that which "pre-sees" everything
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on September 30, 2013, 11:06:29 pm
I like the thoughts, tekne.

I don't know the similarities between our interpretations but I'm of the opinion that Bakker is riffing (toying with) the arguments of Socrates from Plato's Phaedo.

All souls exist someplace (the same place) before and after life so that they may keep returning to bodily form. Socrates further argues that all knowledge is actually recollection of things we knew in this after/before lifepool. Finally, that you can escape to this after/before lifepool forever, if only you live one virtuous enough life (which is where things get otherwise complicated because how do we know what the Gods actually want of us...)
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on October 01, 2013, 01:57:36 am
thank you! for the excursus(for I am less in western philosophy myself than the ancient india's) but I am pretty sure those similariies  in doctrines are not coincidental..not many have heard of such symbiote to ever exist  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Quinthane on October 01, 2013, 04:38:12 am
"...Try to flee again and I promise, I'll murder the world to find you."--Cnaiur urs Skiotha TDTCB p.412 the Overlook Press
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on October 01, 2013, 06:54:07 pm
Great quote.

tekne, I'm familiar with some of those ideas (dabbled in Asian philosophy for awhile). Cool stuff.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on October 01, 2013, 11:11:12 pm
real neat talking to You! and other participants.. it's really warming  that Bakker has somehow brought together, different but not alien us)
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on October 02, 2013, 12:57:43 am
-Reality, afterall, is a function of detail.-
let's discuss nuances of another  Bakker's statement,shall we?
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on October 02, 2013, 01:19:27 pm
Can you cite your quotes, please, tekne?

Otherwise, detail is the important word, for me. Does Bakker mean to say that Reality functions at large like details do in small? Macrocosm/Microcosm metaphor?
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: tekne on October 02, 2013, 10:49:29 pm
yes,sure)
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on October 11, 2015, 08:36:39 pm
Quote from: p87, TDTCB
And Achamian wondered where it all went, the past, and why, if it were gone, it made his heart ache so.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: v0id_walker on August 01, 2016, 04:01:37 pm
As far as I know RSB studied Philosphy, so there might be some connection between his books and... this ;D
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: The Black Light on March 01, 2017, 12:01:42 am
It is befitting, I suppose, that in order to better explore the darkness that comes before me, because I'm new here and there's quite a lot of darkness around, I should start from the very beginning...

Some of Bakker's quotes strikes me as remarkable, to say the least, so during my reading of the PoN I took some time to write some of them down or hunt others down during the reread I did. Some day, when I do a TSA reread, I will probably add more from there. So here are some:

"Intelligent people, Achaimian had found, were typically less happy. The reason for this was simple: they were better able to rationalize their delusions. The ability to stomach truth had little to do with intelligence – nothing, in fact. The intellect was far better at arguing away truths than at finding them."
- TWP

"Maithanet carried a plague whose primary symptom was certainty. How the God could be equated with the absence of hesitation was something Achamian had never understood. After all, what was the God but the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling-within this mystery?"
- TDTCB, Chapter Three

“I thought you said the ancients believed their gods lived atop these things,” Kellhus called down. “Why do you tarry?”
Achaimian paused, scowled up at the remaining distance. Gasping for breath, he struggled to smile through his grimace. “Because the ancients believed their gods lived atop these things…”
- TWP

“The world has had the habit,” Achamian said, “of breaking the back of my promises.”
- TDTCB, Chapter Three

"Achaimian liked to claim that men were simple, that women need only feed, fuck, and flatter them to keep them happy."
- TDTCB I suppose, I haven't written if it's from The Darkness... or TWP

"Am I so different from this man? Achamian asked himself, watching the captain in his periphery. Not really, he thought, but he ignored the man nonetheless and turned back to stare at Sumna, hazy against the dark hills.
And yet he was different. So many cares, and the wages so slight. Different in that his tantrums could sweep away city gates, pulverize flesh, and snap bone. Such power, and yet the same vanities, the same fears, and far darker whims. He had expected the mythic to raise him up, to exalt his every act, and instead he was set adrift . . . Detachment enlightened no one. He could turn this ship into a shining inferno, then walk unscathed across the surface of the water, and yet he could never be . . . certain.
- TDTCB, Chapter Three
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on March 01, 2017, 12:21:59 am
Some quality choices there-in, TBL. Welcome to the Second Apocalypse :).
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: H on March 01, 2017, 11:58:38 am
Welcome, TBL, if you have questions or ideas just make a thread, new threads are like water in a desert here, they'll always attract posters.

"Achaimian liked to claim that men were simple, that women need only feed, fuck, and flatter them to keep them happy."
- TDTCB I suppose, I haven't written if it's from The Darkness... or TWP

TWP, Chapter 12.

Quote
No two prophets agree. So to spare our prophets their feelings, we call the future a whore.
—Zarathinius, A Defence of the Arcane Arts

I always found most of the epigraphs pretty great.  Another:

Quote
Since all men count themselves righteous, and since
no righteous man raises his hand against the innocent,
a man need only strike another to make him evil.

—Nulla Vogneas, The Cynicata
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: The Black Light on March 05, 2017, 02:22:54 pm
Thank you all, I'm glad I can finally dig in here after finishing TGO a few weeks ago. I don't have much time these days, but I was pondering some things and I have to check if there's already a thread like this.
Anyway, I was going to post some of the epigraphs as well, but I think they are all already included in the Wikiquote. Or others I've taken from RSB's Goodreads profile, so I guess they can also be included in the Wikiquote easily. Actually is this project still alive?
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Wilshire on March 05, 2017, 03:21:21 pm
Its a living project in that its always open for anyone to add to.

As you might have seen, there wasn't much of a push to add quotes after I set it up, so I don't really curate it anymore. That said, its simple enough to add to the list yourself ;) so feel free to do so, or just add stuff here as you see fit - you never know when someone will get the itch to add them to wikiquote.
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Francis Buck on April 03, 2017, 03:04:52 am
This is from TGO, so beware spoilers. While this doesn't really have the uncanny insight of a good Bakkerism, it's perhaps my favorite example of "Bakker the Writer" in the entire series thus far, in-so-far as the pure aesthetics of prose and all that. Nobody else does epic fantasy like this today:


Quote
     "I see him so clearly!" the high King gasped. "He's taken the sun as his charger, and he rides among us. I see him! Galloping through the hearts of my people, stirring them to wonder and fury!"
     Gilgaol, War, come to claim him... Come to save, despite everything.
     "Shush.. Conserve your strength, my King. The surgeons are coming."
     The vision's eyes were fury, his hair the tangle of warring nations, and his teeth were as whetted blades. A crown gleaned above his brow, four golden horns, clutched in the arms of four nubile virgins--the Spoils. Bones and bodies clotted the ravines of his grim expression. And his cloak smoked with the burning of fields.
     Gilgaol, the Dread Father of Death, the All-Taker.
     Brave, broken King...
     He did not so much fly toward the high King as grow, bigger and bigger, bloating until he blotted the Whirlwind, crowded the very sky. Fire sheathed and pulsed across his four horns, streams that plummeted in skyward oblivion. He opened his hands, and lo! Another stood within the curved palms, bright as a ceremonial knife. A Norsirai, though his beard was squared and plaited in the fashion of Shir and Kyraneas. His dress was strange, and his arms and armor bore the glint of Nonmen metals. Two decapitated heads swung from his girdle...
     Behold the son of a hundred fathers...
     Behold the end of the World...
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Jackehehe on July 02, 2017, 09:36:11 pm
Shouldn't this forum topic be in the general section?

Also, a really great quote from the "what has come before..." section in the books (page 2 in TUC):

"Centuries passed and the mantle of human civilization crept along the great river basins of Eärwa and outward, bringing bronze where there had been flint, cloth where there had been skins and writing where there had been recital. Great cities rose to teeming life. The wilds gave way to cultivated horizons."

I think the prose here is masterful, really!
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Madness on July 03, 2017, 12:17:06 am
There is copy of this thread in every subforum except maybe TUC ;).
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Jackehehe on July 03, 2017, 05:55:09 am
haha okay, sorry, I was in a bit of a surge yesterday, having just finished the TUC and all. Sorry for the bother and thanks for your reply as always!
Title: Re: Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project
Post by: Wilshire on July 03, 2017, 02:07:54 pm
Shouldn't this forum topic be in the general section?

Also, a really great quote from the "what has come before..." section in the books (page 2 in TUC):

"Centuries passed and the mantle of human civilization crept along the great river basins of Eärwa and outward, bringing bronze where there had been flint, cloth where there had been skins and writing where there had been recital. Great cities rose to teeming life. The wilds gave way to cultivated horizons."

I think the prose here is masterful, really!

Great quote!

Yeah, this should probably be in the General Earwa subforum rather than a separate one in each. However, this topic was posted 5+ years ago and I'm too lazy to consolidate it right now :P .