Elric Quotes

Even when our eyes are closed, there's a whole world that exists outside ourselves and our dreams.

I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.

Stand up and walk. Keep moving forward. You've got two good legs. So get up and use them. You're strong enough to make your own path.-Edward Elric

A lesson without pain is meaningless. That's because no one can gain without sacrificing something. But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart.

I'M NOT SHORT!!!!! ~Edward Elric

There's no such thing as being cowardly in a fight. ~Edward Elric

No fair, sky. I'm the one who feels like crying.

Damn it, there are so many idiots whose asses I have to kick! I'll have to start carrying a list just to keep track of 'em all!

If there's no door, then I'll make one!

What?! I'm not small! It's the world that's too big!!

Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful

There are many questions in this world that have no answers.

Greed (as Ling): You humans always get all "holier-than-thou" when it comes to this stuff... I really don't get you. Edward: It's called having integrity. You should try it sometime

Thank you, Edward. You really are special. Being able to create something so wonderful.....But it's too bad... ... You couldn't put me back together too. Trisha Elric

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only, truth. But the world isn't perfect, and the law is incomplete. Equivalent Exchange doesn't encompass everything that goes on here, but I still choose to believe in its principle, that all things do come at a price, that there's an ebb and a flow, a cycle, that the pain we went through did have a reward, and that anyone who's determined and perseveres will get something of value in return, even if it's not what they expected. I don't think of Equivalent Exchange as a law of the world anymore. I think of it as a promise, between my brother and me. A promise that, someday, we'll see each other again.

But even so, we're not devils, let alone gods. We're human. We're human!

Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!

The "Wet Tongue Gets Stuck To A Frozen Flagpole" attack!

Told you, Rose. Get too close to the sun, and you'll burn." -Edward Elric

We're going to start walking again. We can't stand still, you know. Not as long as we're still alive.

For this was the other thing that Elric knew: that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance.

When I was certain he was going to kill me, my mind went blank, and I didn't have any hope anymore. All I could do was scream my lungs out. I felt so helpless, I couldn't even bring myself to believe someone might save me. And then you showed up Al, and I realized that if we don't take care of each other then no one else will. So I'll do anything in my power to get our bodies back, even if it means being the militaries lap dog. And we'll just have to hope our powers are good enough to help us rise above our own limits. Because we're not Gods, we're humans, tiny insignificant humans. Who couldn't even save a little girl. " Edward- Elric

The cycle of life only goes one direction, not even alchemy can change that" -Ed Elric

Stand up and walk. Move forward.

And now, I'm thinking again, isn't there something we can do about something we can't do anything about?

And now, Elric had told three lies. The first concerned his cousin Yyrkoon. The second concerned the Black Sword. The third concerned Cymoril. And upon those three lies was Elric's destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.

Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

Water: 35 Liters. Carbon: 20 Kg. Ammonia: 4 Liters. Lime: 1.5 Kg. Phosphorus: 800 g. Salt: 250 g. Saltpeter: 100g. Sulfur: 80g. Fluorine: 7.5 g. Iron: 5 g. Silicon: 3 g. And 15 other elements in small quantities... That's the total chemical makeup of the average adult body... For that matter, the elements found in a human being... is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child's allowance. Humans are pretty cheaply made. - Edward Elric

Let me tell you a little story. You may have heard it before. It's a story about a butcher named Barry. Once upon a time, in central city, there was a butcher named Barry. Barry loved to chop up meat more than anything in the world. But one day, when Barry got tired of just chopping up cows and pigs... ...He found something NEW to chop up-- PEOPLE. And so, he went out night after night in search of fresh meat. Eventually, Barry was caught, but not before he had slaughtered 23 victims!!! For terrorizing the poor people of central city, Barry was sent straight to the gallows...And everyone else lived happily ever after!

Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

Why should their pain produce such marvelous beauty? he wonders. Or is all beauty created through pain? Is that the secret of great art, both human and Melnibonen?

We must be bound to one another then," Elric murmured despairingly. "Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then—let it be thus so—and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melinbone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind—produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us!

I walk the moonbeam roads a silver web connecting the many worlds of the Multiverse.

I know not which I prefer the look of—those who attack us or that which defends us!

If we remain adaptable, we remain strong. If we force others to accept our traditions and values, we ultimately grow weak…

Man was not born to a world of justice. But he can create such a world!

The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.

The past is a script we are constantly rewriting.

a society dedicated solely to the preservation of her past, soon has only her past to sell.

Death is the promise we're all born with, sir. A good death is better than a poor one.

One avoids becoming a Tolkien clone precisely by returning to the same roots that inspired The Lord of the Rings.

And you, Prince Elric?" She attracted the albino's wandering attention. "Do you know his story?" Elric shook his head. "I only know," he said, "that he is a shape-changer and, that most cursed of souls, a person of rare goodness and sanity. Imagine such torment as is his!

Life’s not easy, it is a hard task to live it well and with grace—but, by Hades, let’s not complicate it with deities and water-nymphs!

IT IS THE colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the colour of bone, resting on each arm of a seat which has been carved from a single, massive ruby.

Elric: We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocation of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things. John Sheridan: Such as? Elric: The true secrets, the important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain. How to say good-bye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them. That is why we are going away—to preserve that knowledge. Sheridan: From what? Elric: There is a storm coming, a black and terrible storm. We would not have our knowledge lost or used to ill purpose. From this place we will launch ourselves into the stars. With luck, you will never see our kind again in your lifetime. I know you have your orders, Captain. Detain us if you wish. But I cannot tell you where we are going. I can only ask you to trust us.

A lesson without pain is meaningless. That's because no one can gain without sacrificing something. But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart

A lesson without pain is meaningless. That’s because no one can gain without sacrificing something. But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart.

Know this. Elric cannot have want he desires most. What he desires does not exist. What he desires is dead. All Elric has is sorrow, guilt, malice, hatred. This is all he deserves and all he will ever desire.

Humankind Cannot Gain Anything Without First Giving Something In Return. To obtain, Something Of Equal Value Must Be Lost. That Is Alchemy's First Law Of Equivalent Exchange.

Humanity's advancement is founded on looking for new possibilities instead of being bound by general principles.

The albino found himself brooding upon the nature of all unholy bargains, of his own dependency upon the hellsword Stormbringer, of his willingness to summon supernatural aid without thought of any spiritual consequences to himself and, perhaps most significant, of his unwillingness to find a way to cure himself of the occult's seductive attraction; for there was a part of his strange brain that was curious to follow its own fate; to learn whatever disastrous conclusion lay in store for it—it needed to know the end of the saga: the value, perhaps, of its torment.

Yet without Chaos there would be no Creation, and perhaps no Creator. That is the simple truth of all existence, Lord Elric. The promise of immortality.

Elric offered Moonglum a smile that had gratitude in it. “You are—a good friend—I wonder why . . .

That the world forgets me is all I ask,” Elric sighed.

Moonglum sighed. “Elric—this once, let us not court the danger.

We are wary of you, Elric. Even if we allowed you to lead us again you would take your own doomed path and us with you. There is no future here for myself and my men.

. “Thanks, good sir,” he said lightly. “Without your help, the battle might have lasted longer. You deprived me of good sport, but you meant well. Moonglum is my name.

'No one lives in Ameeron by choice.''A veritable City of the Damned.''As the poet might remark, aye.' Rackhir offered Elric a sardonic wink. 'But I sometimes think all cities are that.'

Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

Elric and his companions swung themselves on to their horses as, with a frightful multivoiced scream, the dead lords were swallowed by the earth, returning to the depths from which they had been summoned.

The merchants were already regretting their haste in contacting the albino. They had a feeling that not only were the legends true—but they did not do justice to the strange-eyed man they wished to employ.

The note took long moments to fade and, when it had at last died away, there was an absolute hush over the world, the milling millions were still, there was an air of expectancy. And then the White Lords came.

. Elric turned his face towards her, his crimson-irised eyes burning with a strange emotion. He put a hand to his dead white skin and a crooked smile twisted his lips. “I, too, have felt as you do,” he said quietly.

I have brought evil to many places,” he said, “but usually there has already been evil to match mine. I seek no excuses, for I know what I am and I know what I have done. I have slain malignant sorcerers and destroyed oppressors, but I have also been responsible for slaying fine men, and a woman, my cousin, whom I loved, I killed—or my sword did.

Arioch!” swore Elric, suddenly recognizing the riders. “These are the Lords of Dharzi—dead these ten centuries. We’re fighting dead men, Moonglum, and the too-tangible ghosts of their dogs. Unless I can think of a sorcerous means to defeat them, we’re doomed!

At which Charion Pratt blushed girlishly, to her own furious embarrassment, yet the eye she cast upon the little coxcomb was not unlike that which a certain toad had once cast upon her: for there is never anything but apparent paradox in the choices made by lovers.

If your people spent less time maintaining their own devalued myths about themselves and more upon studying the world as it is I think your city would have a greater chance of surviving. As it is, the place is crumbling beneath the weight of its own degraded fictions. The legends which offer a race their sense of pride and history eventually become putrid.

I can accept then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us.

he cursed the malevolent Gods for the black day when idly, for their amusement, they had spawned men.

The legends which offer a race their sense of pride and history eventually become putrid.

. “I am a man possessed,” he groaned, “and without this devil-blade I carry I would not be a man at all.

A man frantically spurring an equally frightened horse—and behind him, the distance decreasing, a pack of what at first appeared to be dogs. But these were not dogs—they were half-dog and half-bird, with the lean, shaggy bodies and legs of dogs but possessing birdlike talons in place of paws and savagely curved beaks which snapped where muzzles should have been.

That night they slept restlessly and, as he had predicted, Elric screamed agonizingly in his turbulent, terror-filled sleep and he called a name which made Shaarilla’s eyes fill with pain and jealousy. Wide-eyed in his grim sleep, Elric seemed to be staring at the one he named, speaking other words in a sibilant language which made Shaarilla block her ears and shudder.

I am from crumbling Imrryr, the Dreaming City, from the Isle of the Dragon, hub of Ancient Melniboné, and I know what beauty really is. Your baubles cannot tempt one who has looked upon the milky Heart of Arioch, upon the blinding iridescence that throbs from the Ruby Throne, of the languorous and unnamable colours in the Actorios stone of the Ring of Kings. These are more than jewels, madam—they contain the lifestuff of the universe.

. “No!” His scream was anguished, unbelieving. “No!” Tears flowed down his contorted face as he ran his hands through the fine dust. With a groan which racked his whole being, he fell forward, his face hitting the disintegrated parchment. Time had destroyed the Book—untouched, possibly forgotten, for three hundred centuries. Even the wise and powerful gods who had created it had perished—and now its knowledge followed them into oblivion.

ELRIC, LORD OF the lost and sundered Empire of Melniboné, rode like a fanged wolf from a trap—all slavering madness and mirth. He rode from Nadsokor, City of Beggars, and there was hate in his wake for he had been recognized as their old enemy before he could obtain the secret he had sought there. Now they hounded him and the grotesque little man who rode laughing at Elric’s side; Moonglum the Outlander, from Elwher and the Unmapped East.

A great and dreadful storm was blowing—and he was the object of the Lasshaar’s attack. He had to retaliate, else his own soul would be wrenched from him by the Giants of the Wind and flung to the air spirits, to be borne for eternity on the winds of the world. Then his voice would moan like a banshee around the cold peaks of high ice-clothed mountains for ever—lost and lonely. His soul would be damned to travel with the four winds wherever their caprice might bear it, knowing no rest.

Two eyes, the colour of thin, yellow wine, were set high in the thing’s body, though it had no separate head. A mouthing, obscene slit, filled with fangs, lay just beneath the eyes. It had no nose or ears that Elric could see. Four appendages sprang from its upper parts and its lower body slithered along the ground, unsupported by any limbs. Elric’s eyes ached as he looked at it. It was incredibly disgusting to behold and its amorphous body gave off a stench of death and decay. Fighting down his fear, the albino inched forward warily, his sword held high to parry any thrust the thing might make with its arms. Elric recognized it from a description in one of his grimoires. It was a Mist Giant—possibly the only Mist Giant, Bellbane.

Now Elric was caught up in a kind of intradimensional hurricane, in which a thousand reverses ocurred within his brain at once and he became a thousand other creatures for an instant, and where he lived through more than ten other lives; a fate only minimally different from the one that was familiar to him; and so vast did the multiverse become, so unthinkable, that he began to go mad as he attempted to make sense of just a fraction of what laid siege to his sanity.

It is our firm belief that we shall one day learn the plan of the entire multiverse and travel at will from Sphere to Sphere, from realm to realm, from world to world, travel through the great clouds of shifting, multicoloured stars, the tumbling planets in all their millions, through galaxies that swarm like gnats in a summer garden, and rivers of light–glory beyond glory–pathways of moonbeams between the roaming stars.

It only seems complicated because it is strange,' Corum said. 'Your world would doubtless seem incomprehensible to me of I were suddenly flung into it.

You are not. You believe that sword to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis. It is the part of you which represents your weakness, not your strength.

One day you will be taught that neutrality is more dangerous than side-taking, renegade. ~ Arioch, Lord of the Seven Darks.

A Holy War! What better than righteous piety to disguise over-reaching greed?

Elric spoke a mighty sermon, while Magre started the fire in his pit. Elric expounded, recited Scripture and sang the glories of the Faith. When he came to an end and declared his final ‘Hallelujah!’, Magre gave him a stoup of ale to ease his throat. Sharpening a knife he complimented Elric upon the fervour of his rhetoric. Then he smote off Elric’s head, cut, drew, spitted, cooked and devoured the sanctified morsel with a garnish of leeks and cabbages.

Power is neither good nor evil. It is the use one makes of it which is good or evil.

Fenki: 'It would be rude to interrupt the Night Worms when they feast on your tasty blood ...

They blinded themselves to the obvious. That is the great triumph of mindless need over intelligence and the human spirit.

Elric knew. The sword told him, without words of any sort. Stormbringer needed to fight, for that was its reason for existence. Stormbringer needed to kill, for that was its source of energy, the lives and the souls of men, demons—even gods.

As I believe I observed earlier,’ said the albino prince to the still-cowed Gaynor, ‘the most powerful of beings are not necessarily the most intelligent, nor, indeed, sane, nor well-mannered. The more one knows of the gods, the more one learns this fundamental lesson…

Elric knew; that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance. This knowledge gave Elric his strength – his profound anger at injustice and inequality

it was possible to live in harmony with mortals of all persuasions and remain vital and engaged with the world. These things he would neither sell nor offer for sale

By Elric’s Sword!” Jhary groaned. “Those are the Chariots of Chaos. I should have guessed!

A lesson without pain is meaningless. For one cannot gain something without sacrificing something of equal value. But if you can endure the pain and overcome it, you will have received a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart.

And upon those three lies was Elric’s destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.

There is no Truth but that of Eternal struggle.

Best believe our fates are our own, even if the evidence denies it.

Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind.

Inside the temple, Richard found a life waiting for him, all ready to be worn and lived, and inside that life, another. Each life he tried on, he slipped into, and it pulled him further in, further away from the world he came from; one by one, existence following existence, rivers of dreams and fields of stars, a hawk with a sparrow clutched in its talons flies low above the grass, and here are tiny intricate people waiting for him to fill their heads with life, and thousands of years pass and he is engaged in strange work of great importance and sharp beauty, and he is loved, and he is honoured, and then a pull, a sharp tug and it’s…

Oh, be silent!” Elric cried. “For a god, you talk too much. Take the swords—and give me back my wife!