Phrases that have stuck with you

This doesn't really fit under the quotes or the OKA quote section.

Have you ever heard or read something that at the time didn't mean much, but then one day had a profound meaning?

A friend told me that some people feel that they are meant for something special but they aren't; we are all meant to play one role - to die.

That has been stuck in my head for about 5 years now. Every once in a while I will read or hear something that will bring that phrase back to mind often with a chuckle.

Isn't that just basic nihilist philosophy?

Nihilist believe that being has no meaning, purpose, ect. Which is not what that phrase is about.

And yet, my depression has booted up yet again and is asking whether or not it matters when I fulfill my role. I won't do it myself, though. I've gone this road too many times to end it.

Yep, I see what you mean -- however I do like to hope that something amazing will happen. Just because we are going to die it doesn't meant we can't make the best of our time on this Earth!

And yes it has, the phrase getting stuck I mean. A few of my friends are heavily into bands like My Chemical Romance, The Academy Is, Cobra Starship, Taking Back Sunday and Escape The Fate... which I don't mind listening to, but aren't my favourites in terms of bands (as long as it isn't those Fallout Boy guys, I don't like their stuff). But anyways, one of them had a random song sent to me, and I listened to it. I didn't think much of it then, I just listened and said it was nice but it's not really my "thing". Now today I was walking around and a random phrase got into my head: "Take the pain out of love and then love won't exist". That puzzled me forever, and as soon as I got online I Googled and it was from that song.
This was just an example. I get random phrases stuck a lot!

There have been many.

Nathaniel Hawthorne provided one that I can never quote accurately without looking it up but it effects me profoundly, nevertheless.
"He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself." - The Scarlet Letter.

Also, the couplet of Sonnet 57. It's my signature for a reason.
Actually, mentioning Shakespeare in this topic is unfair because of the number and profundity of the phrases we've collected.
-William

There are a lot of phrases that have stuck with me through the years.
Assumption is the mother of all f**k ups! - Is one of them. It's one of these things that can't bee said too many times.
There is no why. - A song title that I carry with me. It's always just made sense to me. Because sometimes, there is no "why".

There's a stack of other ones.. but these two are at the top of my head at the moment.

Freetha's reminds me of one of mine: "Hindsight is the only perfect science"

I know I have more, but there's so much junk in my skull that I can't remember any others right now.

If you speak to me in RL, you'd probably notice that I have a lot of catchphrases. "Here's the thing" is probably the only one that made it into netspeak, but I don't use it much any more and it's not exactly profound.

I've certainly had the experience of reading poems or listening to songs about things I hadn't experienced (in this life, at any rate) and seen meaning in them - but only later, after having had the experience, did I see the truth in them.

There are many, but the most obvious is In Memoriam 14, by Tennyson, which I'll repost here in full:

Quote:If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch’d the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,
And how my life had droop’d of late,
And he should sorrow o’er my state
And marvel what possess’d my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.

It's the most perfect depiction of denial I have ever seen. The moment I read it I loved that poem and understood it on an academic level, but it wasn't until I had lost someone in this life that I could actually point to it and say I knew it to be true. What makes the above even more mind blowing is that it isn't just a metaphor - Tennyson wrote it on the day the ship carrying his best friend's body docked in England. It's a very specific emotion and very specific event perfectly generalised.

A slightly more straightforward example is another of my favourite poems, Shelly's Ozymandias.

Quote:I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Again I loved this poem from the moment I first read it, but there are a heap of double meanings that I completely and totally missed for years. The most obvious is "nothing beside remains", meaning both that there is nothing remaining beside the statue (no sign of the empire, etc) but also that the statue is nothing other than remains. I had a fantastic time when I sat down and really studied it instead of just reading it, because lots of things like that slapped me in the face and made me feel first like a total idiot for not noticing them, and second very satisfied and happy that I finally had.

A recent one that goes through my skull randomly: "I cannot count the number of men that have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it."

On the same string: "A woman that wears a knife is obviously looking for trouble. However, a woman that carries a knife is ready for trouble."

Both are from the book "The Name of the Wind". Read, and join me in the annoyance of a perfect cliffhanger and no sequel published yet!