Excalibur Quotes

I don’t have my knife,” I mumble. “Don’t start that,” Anna says. She walks away from me sharply. “Arthur without Excalibur was still Arthur.

I seem to have excalibured this knife.

Arthur without Excalibur was still Arthur.

Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

Langdon turned to Sophie. "Who is that? What... happened?" Teabing hobbled over. "You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur made by Acme Orthopedic.

King Arthur: I am your king. Peasant Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you. King Arthur: You don't vote for kings. Peasant Woman: Well, how'd you become king, then? [Angelic music plays... ] King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king. Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Arthur: Be quiet! Dennis the Peasant: You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

What did I want? I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get u feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur--I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles. I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

Cortana," he said. "Made by Wayland the Smith, the legendary forger of Excalibur and Durendal. Said to choose its bearer. When Ogier raised it to slay the son of Charlemagne on the field, an angel came and broke the sword and said to him, 'Mercy is better than Revenge.

...and then the threw the sword as far into the water as he might; and there came an arm and a hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.

Love was everyone's to experience if they opened their hearts, but true love was a rare and sterling thing, damn if it wasn't, a sterling thing that required the intervention of destiny: two hearts fated to be as one, finding each other among the billions of the world. True love, by God, was the Excalibur of emotions, and if you recognized it when you saw it, if you drew that noble, shining blade from the stone, your life would be a grand adventure even if you lived it entirely in one small town.

She is a woman, and what women want, they get, and if the world and all it holds must be broken in the getting, then so be it.

Dreams are like songs. Their task is not to offer an exact image of the world, but a suggestion of it.

without Excalibur the Grail cannot be discovered

My dear Lord,’ I said, but not to him. I spoke to Arthur. And I watched and wept, my arm around Ceinwyn, as the pale boat was swallowed by the shimmering silver mist. And so my Lord was gone. And no one has seen him since.

We are a race of tradition-lovers in a new land, of king-reverers in a Republic, of hero-worshipers in a society of mundane get-and-spend. It is a Country and a Time where any bank clerk or common laborer can become a famous outlaw, where an outlaw can in a very short time be sainted in song and story into a Robin Hood, where a Frontier Model Excalibur can be drawn from the block at any gunshop for twenty dollars.

Guinevere grimaced. ‘Do you know how cloying love can be, Derfel? I don’t want to be worshipped. I don’t want every whim granted. I want to feel there’s something biting back.

History is not just a tale of men’s making, but is a thing tied to the land. We call a hill by the name of a hero who died there, or name a river after a princess who fled beside its banks, and when the old names vanish, the stories go with them and the new names carry no reminder of the past.

So, in the morning light, where they flapped in the drying wind, the bear and the star defied the Saxons.

Yes," he said - he would have said it to anything, she could have suggested a mutiny and he'd have searched tirelessly for an axe, a pitchfork, Excalibur itself - and she smiled up at him, lifting her chin to permit him full view of her approval. The prospect of it, of anything, buzzed in his veins.

Honor is a balancing act and only the heart can strike that balance.

Caladfwlch is ‘hard lightning’ in Welsh. The silly French dubbed the blade Excalibur.

Teabing hobbled over. "You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur made by Acme Orthopedic.

Where Excalibur slept, I stand. In this place, I am the blade.

My cock will hold you safely in place. My cock will be like Excalibur and your ass like the rock none could pull it from.

So endeth the story of the winning of Excalibur, and may God give unto you in your life, that you may have His truth to aid you, like a shining sword, for to overcome your enemies; and may He give you Faith (for Faith containeth Truth as a scabbard containeth its sword), and may that Faith heal all your wounds of sorrow as the sheath of Excalibur healed all the wounds of him who wore that excellent weapon. For with Truth and Faith girded upon you, you shall be as well able to fight all your battles as did that noble hero of old, whom men called King Arthur.

Wear what you want. You're the ONLY person on the planet who can pull Excalibur. Wearing a skirt while you do it not gonna change that... You're welcome! Have a great ancient blood ceremony!

At least I’m the one leaving. It’s so much easier to leave than to be left.

A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes! He would take charge of his life anew, binding his breaking selves together. Those changes in himself that he sought, he himself would initiate and make them. No more of this miasmic, absent drift. How had he ever persuaded himself that his money-mad burg would rescue him all by itself, this Gotham in which Jokers and Penguins were running riot with no Batman (or even Robin) to frustrate their schemes, this Metropolis built of Kryptonite in which no Superman dared set foot, where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness, where people lived such polished lives that the great rough truths of raw existence had been rubbed and buffed away, and in which human souls had wandered so separately for so long that they barely remembered how to touch; this city whose fabled electricity powered the electric fences that were being erected between men and men, and men and women, too? Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W. Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? What, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O Parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round? He felt a flood bursting in him and did not hold back. Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused him, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction. What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself. It made him want what it promised and eternally withheld. Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized: Indians, Uzbeks, Japanese, Lilliputians, all. America was the world's playing field, its rule book, umpire, and ball. Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town and the matter of America the only business at hand; and so, like everyone, Malik Solanka now walked its high corridors cap in hand, a supplicant at its feast; but that did not mean he could not look it in the eye. Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay.

Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I Have founded my Round Table in the North, And whatsoever his own knights have sworn My knights have sworn the counter to it -- and say My tower is full of harlots, like his court, But mine are worthier, seeing thy profess To be none other than themselves -- and say My knights are all adulterers like his own, But mine are truer, seeing they profess To be none other; and say his hour is come, The heathen are upon him, his long lance Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.

In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that great Excalibur which they had forged with infinite pains and skill—the method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty 'two-handed engine at the door' of the theologian is warranted to make a speedy end of any and every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, 'poetically' or, 'in a spiritual sense,' the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires they should mean.

I gave in to the weight around me. I’d become the Lady of the Lake without Excalibur, the damsel in distress without the prince to save her, Dorothy without her slippers or Alice without her “drink me” potion. Fantastic dreams weaved into amazing tales of triumph over obstacles. I was not triumphant over anything. I was a coward.

In the beginning there was a war. Before there were men or green fields or the untamed sea. Before there was anything at all, before Time existed, there was a terrible war. A war that these beings you saw today lost. The Archangel Michael, with the Sword mortal men would name Excalibur, cast them down for their transgression against the throne of heaven.

She would mourn Morgana too. A person did not have to be good for there to be loss when they left this world ahead of their time.

No empieces con eso”, dice Anna. Ella se aleja de mí drásticamente. “Arturo sin Excalibur, todavía era Arturo”.

Teabing hobbled over. “You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur made by Acme Orthopedic.

Takes a queen to pull #Excalibur

Christianity is not a religion that offers the solace of revenge to its adherents. For that you must go to the old women who know which herbs to pluck and what charms to say under a waning moon.

who once before abandoned the path to pull excalibur from the stone what you seek has always been there triumphs happened to whom who journeys — to the sword lodged in an anvil placed on a stone

What the fuck is this thing? Excalibur?” Adam grunted, starting to sweat through his now ruined Armani t-shirt. He gave his brother a disgusted look. “Seriously, man. How did you fuck up this bad?

John the Skrull: You say you've taken magic? Well all right, lads, all right. I could do the "Spartacus" thing, change into one of you, get lost among you. Live for five more minutes. But you know what? I'm not going to die looking like you! I don't want to be one of the fascists who made my people into morons! Who took something beautiful like Excalibur here and made it into just.. a.. bit of metal.

And afterwards, you recall little, except the blows that so nearly killed you. You work and push and stab to make an opening in their shield wall. And then you grunt and lunge and slash to widen the gap. And only then does the madness take over. As the enemy breaks and you can begin to kill like a god. Because the enemy is scared and running or scared and frozen. And all they can do is die while you harvest souls.

On y voit comme à travers un pelle là-dedans... Hé lumières!!! Pff bande de fainéants... Ah ça, pour roupiller, vous êtes fortiche (s'esclaffe) Les chevaliers de la Table Ronde... CHEVALIERS DE MES DEUX !!! Chuis p... chuis pas roi, moi ? C'est p..., c'est pas moi le roi ?! (dégainant Excalibur) Et ça, c'est du nougat ??? Tout seul, je vais le chercher le Graal, moi, et la vie éternelle, c'est pour bibi !!! Et vous, vous irez vous gratter!!!

True love, by God, was the Excalibur of emotions, and if you recognized it when you saw it, if you drew that noble, shining blade from the stone, your life would be a grand adventure even if you lived it entirely in one small town.

So now I shall write the tale’s ending with my sword beside me and I shall hope that I am given time to finish this tale of Arthur, my Lord, who was betrayed, reviled and, after his departure, missed like no other man was ever missed in all of Britain’s history.

What did I want? I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist, and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur - I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles. I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is. I had had one chance - for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be - and I had known it and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get.

And thus Lancelot died, though the songs he had paid for lived on, and to this day he is celebrated as a hero equal to Arthur. Arthur is remembered as a ruler, but Lancelot is called the warrior. In truth he was the King without land, a coward, and the greatest traitor of Britain, and his soul wanders Lloegyr to this day, screaming for its shadowbody that can never exist because we cut his corpse into scraps and fed it to the river. If the Christians are right, and there is a hell, may he suffer there for ever.

The world is an ambitious business. It continuously expands and evolves. But people are lazy and God is far too lovely to do something about it.

I am forever loving things that cannot love me back.

I do not want you to forget me. Think of me often. Think of me at the most inappropriate times. But think of me honestly, and remember that I am answering for my own mistakes.

Wake up! You’re a sacred soul and glory is yours for the taking.

Why did hearts try to run themselves out of beats? They had so few.

after that I can die in peace instead of having to explain the most elementary matters to absurdly credulous halfwits. And

- Nós queremos a fidelidade nas pessoas que amamos, senhora, então não é óbvio que elas a queiram em nós? A fidelidade é um presente que oferecemos aos que amamos.

All I could think of was the phrase my dad’s father used to say to him when I was a kid, “Don't let your alligator mouth overload your hummingbird ass,” and I think I’d done just that.

At first, I was going to come down and pretend I’d had a change of heart. That I still love you, no matter what you’ve done. But even I’m not a spry enough actress for that. The truth is, you pulled Excalibur from its stone. That makes you the king. Meanwhile, my friends are either in prison or on the run. So, I have two choices. Resist, knowing my friends will be hurt for it. Or . . . be as good a queen as I can and keep an open mind. Because I heard you say you want to be a good king. And to be a good king, you’ll need a good queen. So here are the terms. You treat me and my friends well, and I’ll be the queen you and Camelot need. Do we have a deal?” Rhian picked at his teeth. “You’re fond of the sound of your own voice. I can see why Tedros and every other boy dumped you.

He loved you," I protested. She stared at me and I thought she was about to erupt into a blistering anger, but instead she smiled wanly. "He worshipped me, Derfel," she said tiredly, "and that is not the same thing as being loved.

I’m not meant to be King,’ Gwydre said, ‘then so be it.’ ‘Fate is inexorable,’ I said and, when he looked quizzically at me, I smiled. ‘That was one of Merlin’s favourite sayings. That and “Don’t be absurd, Derfel.” I was always absurd to him.

Someone really should write the rest of the story. You know, the cycles that came after the first Arthur? All the way to the end, with your magical sword sticking Nin’s lake into a billion icy bits? Seems like a pretty huge omission if you ask me.” “Actually a pair of twenty-first-century authors came rather close!” Merlin said, skimming through the books and pulling out one with an electric pink, glowing Excalibur on the cover. “They got a few things lopsided, of course. I am a good dancer.

I want to sit around a Gypsy campfire, eating freshly caught rabbit in the company of bare knuckle fighters, and listen to stories about their fights. I want to sit with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table after they’ve defeated the barbarians in battle. I want to be there when Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, and I want to be surrounded by dragons, wizards and sorcerers. I want to meet the Muslim leader, Saladin, who occupied Jerusalem in 1187, and despite the fact that a number of holy Muslim places had been violated by Christians, preferred to take Jerusalem without bloodshed. He prohibited acts of vengeance, and his army was so disciplined that there were no deaths or violence after the city surrendered. I want to sit around the desert campfire with him. I want to drink with Caribbean buccaneers of the 17th century and listen to their tales of preying on shipping and Spanish settlements. I want to witness Celtic Berserkers fighting in ritual warfare in a trance-like fury. I want to spend time working on a scrap cruise, the very last cruise before the ship’s due to be scrapped, so there’s no future in it, and it attracts all the mad faces of the Merchant Navy. Faces that are known in that industry, who couldn’t survive outside ‘the life’ and who for the most part are quite dangerous and mad themselves. I’d rather have one friend who’ll fight like hell over ten who’ll do nothing but talk shit. And I want to ride with highwaymen on ribbons of moonlight over the purple moor.

Are you certain it was Woody who stole the knife?” “Fifteen minutes ago I found him sneaking about the Tigers’ clubhouse,” said Bugs. “He picked up Excalibur—it’s a purple knife and my name is cut into it. He saw me and ran—we bumped as he got out the door. He shoved Excalibur into the pocket of his green pants as he got outside and kept running.” “You didn’t chase him?” “Naw, Woody broke his arm last week, and I don’t fight one-armed kids,” said Bugs. He rolled his eyes toward heaven. “Anyhow, his mother will be my math teacher next year.” “You want me to get the knife back without anyone knowing Woody stole it, is that the idea?” asked Encyclopedia.

He studied, fretted, complained. He never should have taken the job; it was impossible. The next day he would be flying: he never should have taken the job; it was too simple to be worth his labors. Joy to despair, joy to despair, day to day, hour to hour. Sometimes Inigo would wake to find him weeping: “What is it, Father?” “It is that I cannot do it. I cannot make the sword. I cannot make my hands obey me. I would kill myself except what would you do then?” “Go to sleep, Father.” “No, I don’t need sleep. Failures don’t need sleep. Anyway, I slept yesterday.” “Please, Father, a little nap.” “All right; a few minutes; to keep you from nagging.” Some nights Inigo would awake to see him dancing. “What is it, Father?” “It is that I have found my mistakes, corrected my misjudgments.” “Then it will be done soon, Father?” “It will be done tomorrow and it will be a miracle.” “You are wonderful, Father.” “I’m more wonderful than wonderful, how dare you insult me.” But the next night, more tears. “What is it now, Father?” “The sword, the sword, I cannot make the sword.” “But last night, Father, you said you had found your mistakes.” “I was mistaken; tonight I found new ones, worse ones. I am the most wretched of creatures. Say you wouldn’t mind it if I killed myself so I could end this existence.” “But I would mind, Father. I love you and I would die if you stopped breathing.” “You don’t really love me; you’re only speaking pity.” “Who could pity the greatest sword maker in the history of the world?” “Thank you, Inigo.” “You’re welcome, Father.” “I love you back, Inigo.” “Sleep, Father.” “Yes. Sleep.” A whole year of that. A year of the handle being right, but the balance being wrong, of the balance being right, but the cutting edge too dull, of the cutting edge sharpened, but that threw the balance off again, of the balance returning, but now the point was fat, of the point regaining sharpness, only now the entire blade was too short and it all had to go, all had to be thrown out, all had to be done again. Again. Again. Domingo’s health began to leave him. He was fevered always now, but he forced his frail shell on, because this had to be the finest since Excalibur. Domingo was battling legend, and it was destroying him. Such a year.

- Então Guinevere quebrou o juramento do matrimônio - disse Nimue. - Você acha que ela foi a primeira? Ou acha que isso a torna uma prostituta? Nesse caso a Britânia está cheia de prostitutas até a borda. Ela não é prostituta, Derfel. Ela é uma mulher forte que nasceu com mente rápida e boa aparência, e Artur amou a aparência e não quis usar a mente dela. Não a deixou torná-lo rei, por isso ela se voltou para aquela religião ridícula. E tudo que Artur fazia era dizer como ela seria feliz quando ele pudesse pendurar Excalibur e começar a criar gado! - Nimue riu da ideia. - E como nunca ocorreu a Artur ser infiel, ele jamais suspeitou de Guinevere. O resto de nós suspeitava, mas não Artur. Ele vivia se dizendo que o casamento era perfeito, e o tempo todo estava a quilômetros de distância e a boa aparência de Guinevere atraía homens como a carniça atrai moscas. E eram homens bonitos, homens inteligentes, homens bem-humorados, homens que queriam o poder, e um era um homem bonito que queria todo o poder que conseguisse agarrar, por isso Guinevere decidiu ajudá-lo. Artur queria um curral de vacas, mas Lancelot quer ser Grande Rei da Britânia, e Guinevere acha esse um desafio mais interessante do que criar vacas ou limpar a merda dos bebês. E aquela religião idiota a encorajou. Árbitra dos tronos! - Ela cuspiu. - Guinevere não estava dormindo com Lancelot porque era uma prostituta, seu grande idiota, estava dormindo com ele pra fazer de seu homem o Grande Rei.

suppose I thought of people as dogs,’ he went on ruefully, ‘and that if you gave them enough affection then they would be docile, but they aren’t dogs, Gwydre, they’re wolves. A king must rule a thousand ambitions, and all of them belong to deceivers. You will be flattered, and behind your back, mocked. Men will swear undying loyalty with one breath and plot your death with the next. And if you survive their plots, then one day you will be grey-bearded like me and you’ll look back on your life and realize that you achieved nothing. Nothing. The babies you admired in their mothers’ arms will have grown to be killers, the justice you enforced will be for sale, the people you protected will still be hungry and the enemy you defeated will still threaten your frontiers.

Grail Figure: Have you found the secret that I have lost? Perceval: Yes. You and the land are one.

A flicker of someone else’s memory came to Simon and he picked up Excalibur from where he had dropped it. Carefully, he laid Excalibur on Arthur’s chest. A smile crossed the king’s pasty face as he closed his grazed hands around the sword’s hilt. The touch of something so familiar seemed to give Arthur cause to close his eyes and after a final, relieved breath left his lips, he died.

Duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith where there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

The Excalibur. An asteroid as large as a moon.

You can think of the Earth as the famous Excalibur from your legendary fairy tales, an object of great power sought by many.

A girl.

What in the holy name of a holy harlot,’ Culhwch asked Galahad, ‘is a holy ghost?

Yet the prospect of the Otherworld was a comfort to me. I had friends there, and two daughters, and when the torture was over and my soul was released to its shadowbody, I would have the happiness of reunion. Sansum, I saw, could find no consolation in his religion. All that day he whined, moaned, wept and railed, but his noise achieved nothing.

opened their hearts, but true love was a rare and sterling thing, damn if it wasn’t, a sterling thing that required the intervention of destiny: two hearts fated to be as one, finding each other among the billions of the world. True love, by God, was the Excalibur of emotions, and if you recognized it when you saw it, if you drew that noble, shining blade from the stone, your life would be a grand adventure even if you lived it entirely in one small town.

Love was everyone’s to experience if they opened their hearts, but true love was a rare and sterling thing, damn if it wasn’t, a sterling thing that required the intervention of destiny: two hearts fated to be as one, finding each other among the billions of the world. True love, by God, was the Excalibur of emotions, and if you recognized it when you saw it, if you drew that noble, shining blade from the stone, your life would be a grand adventure even if you lived it entirely in one small town.

The sword was called Caledfwlch, which means ‘hard lightning’ though Igraine prefers to call it Excalibur

Do I believe there is an international conspiracy created by intergalactic lizards to keep us all addicted to television, promote the brainwashing elements of antibacterial soaps, and support the still-alive head of JFK in drawing Excalibur and waging the last noble war against the minions of a cybernetic Walt Disney?

there was something about Gawain’s youth and credulity that was driving me to puncture his pious innocence.

Waiting for one’s execution is worse than dying. To seek my beheading is glory. Who went to his execution willingly? Jesus did. Jesus even dragged his cross half way to Golgotha. I think he would have nailed himself to the cross if he had to.

Clarent and Excalibur. Together. Yesterday, he had held them in his hands and watched as the two swords had fused together to create a single stone sword. Even from across the room, Dee could feel the power radiating from the object in long slow waves.

Visit the worlds not on the map. Befriend the people you can only imagine. Embrace the fantasy only you can create. And live in the stories of which only you can be the author. - K. L. Anderson

What did I want? I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist, and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur – I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles. I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

death is the due we owe to the Gods in return for the life they give us.

queremos a fidelidade nas pessoas que amamos, senhora, então não é óbvio que elas a queiram em nós? A fidelidade é um presente que oferecemos aos que amamos. Artur a deu a Guinevere, mas ela não pôde devolver. Ela queria algo diferente. —

Druids are not allowed to write anything down, it’s against the rules. You know that! Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they’re putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.

if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims.

I have a tendency toward seeking out big, shiny, magical challenges - to find the solution in a quest for the Excalibur sword and pull it from the stone myself, releasing my life force once again. When, in actual fact, what I needed to do was go back to the basics. I'd let the little things slide, the simple, controllable parts of my unpredictable life: good sleep, eating well, drinking more water, daily gratitude, mindfulness meditation, body movement and being immersed in water.

She wanted to laugh at how similar Arthur and Mordred were. They made promises, but really they were both asking her to wait until the guilt faded and the pain lessened and she could live with what she was. She knew that was exactly what would happen, and it terrified her.

Ele a amava — protestei. Guinevere me encarou e achei que estava prestes a irromper numa fúria total, mas em vez disso deu um sorriso triste. — Ele me cultuava, Derfel — falou em voz cansada —, e isso não é o mesmo que ser amada. — Ela se sentou de repente, desmoronando num banco junto ao baú. — E ser cultuada, Derfel, é muito cansativo.

ela viu a figura de Sansum, arrasado e mancando, e deu um pequeno miado de alegria e correu para ele. O quarto de lua brilhou na máscara dourada com que ela cobria o rosto devastado pelo fogo. — Sansum! — gritou ela. — Meu doce! — Preciosa! — disse Sansum e os dois se abraçaram com força no meio da noite. — Querido — balbuciou Morgana, acariciando o rosto dele —, o que fizeram com você? Taliesin sorriu e nem eu, que odiava Sansum e não sentia amor por Morgana, pude resistir a dar um sorriso diante do evidente prazer dos dois. De todos os casamentos que já conheci, aquele era o mais estranho.

a lord who lives without warriors will not stay at peace for long.

Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly.

Fate is inexorable,

At first I thought the thing was a beast, then I saw it was a man, and then I saw that it was Merlin.

Everything was special, because everything was threatened.

The critics discuss Baron Bodissey’s Life: A monumental work if you like monuments … One is irresistibly put in mind of the Laocoön group, with the good baron contorted against the coils of common sense, and the more earnest of his readers likewise endeavoring to disengage themselves. — Pancretic Review, St. Stephen, Boniface Ponderously the great machine ingests its bales of lore; grinding, groaning, shuddering, it brings forth its product: small puffs of acrid vari-colored vapor. — Excalibur,, Patris, Krokinole Six volumes of rhodomontade and piffle. — Academia, London, Earth — Egregious, ranting, boorish, unacceptable — — The Rigellian, Avente, Alphanor — Sneers jealously at the careers of better men … Impossible not to feel honest anger. — Galactic Quarterly, Baltimore, Earth — Tempting to picture Baron Bodissey at work in the Arcadian habitat he promulgates, surrounded by admiring goat-herds. — El Orchide, Serle, Quantique

It was a philosophy which was supposedly fully expounded in Excalibur, an unpublished book Ron was first said to have written in 1938.

Cortana. Il nome significava semplicemente “spada corta”, ma per Emma non lo era. Lunga quanto il suo avambraccio, di metallo lucente, portava incise parole che non mancavano mai di farle correre brividi lungo la schiena: Il mio nome è Cortana e condivido l’acciaio e la tempra di Gioiosa e Durlindana. Suo padre le aveva spiegato il significato di quella frase quando, a dieci anni, le aveva messo per la prima volta l’arma fra le mani. “Capisci cosa significa quella scritta?” Lei aveva scosso la testa. “Acciaio” le era chiaro, ovviamente, ma “tempra”? Per un uomo significava avere carattere, ma una spada che carattere poteva mai avere? “Hai già sentito parlare della famiglia Wayland” aveva aggiunto lui. “Erano famosi fabbricanti d’armi, prima che le Sorelle di Ferro iniziassero a forgiare tutte le spade degli Shadowhunters. Wayland il Fabbro realizzò Excalibur e Gioiosa, quelle di Artù e di Lancillotto, così come Durlindana, la spada dell’eroe Orlando. E fecero anche Cortana, partendo dallo stesso acciaio. L’acciaio deve sempre essere temprato, cioè sottoposto a un calore quasi in grado di fondere o distruggere il metallo, in modo da renderlo più resistente.” A quel punto le aveva dato un bacio sulla testa. “I Carstairs custodiscono questa spada da generazioni. L’iscrizione ci ricorda che gli Shadowhunters sono le armi dell’Angelo. Tempraci nel fuoco, e diventiamo più forti. Pur soffrendo, sopravviviamo.

Experimenting on the blending of human DNA with a multitude of other animal species to develop the perfect fighting chimera… Gee…” Tom said, sarcastically, “it’s hard to imagine why an ethics committee might have a problem with that.

the Abbotsford visitors’ entrance, but the gate was

The draugr continued, "You say you are the champion? We can settle this easily. Inside that crypt lies Mjölnir. Bring it to me." "It's a trick," Baldwin hissed. "Yes, it is a trick," the draugr said. "If the boy is truly a Thorsen, he already knows that. Do you think no one has found that hammer before now? They have. But they cannot lift it. It lies in its bed of stone, and only Thor's true champion and raise it out. Only the living embodiment of the great god himself." "Uh, isn't that Excalibur?" Baldwin said. Matt tried to shush him, but Baldwin said, "It is Excalibur. With the stone. I saw the musical." He lowered his voice. "I think his brains are rotting, too. He seems confused." "The son of Balder, I see," the draugr said. "I would believe you are the living embodiment of Frigg's doomed son. As pleasant and a sun-warmed stone. And just as intelligent." "Hey!" Baldwin said.

I'm not a patriot. I don't care about countries or governments. I care about people... justice... right and wrong...