Good Old Ways/Quotes

But nowadays men can not love seven night but they must have all their desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded and hasty heat, soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so; men and women could love together seven years, and no licours lusts were between them, and then was love, truth, and faithfulness: and lo, in like wise was used love in King Arthur's days. Wherefore I liken love nowadays unto summer and winter; for like as the one is hot and the other cold, so fareth love nowadays; therefore all ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenever, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.

—Sir Thomas Malory

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever

To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
—Robert Frost

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,

To live a second life on second head;

Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:

In him those holy antique hours are seen,

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of another's green,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;

And him as for a map doth Nature store,

To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
—William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 68"

This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.

—Winston Churchill

Delenn: "You, who are watching here and across Minbar...you know this place. You know its history. This is where we chose our leaders before Valen. This is where many of us served and many of us died. The Ancients understood that in war...it is always the young and the powerless who are sent off to fight. Sent by leaders and warriors and generals...who are not themselves engaged in the battle...who do not bleed on the frontlines...who do not die alone in the cold and friendless night.But here, in this place, that changed."'
Shakiri: "What are you playing at?"

Delenn: "If the Warrior caste has set aside the wisdom of Valen...if they wish to return to the old ways...then they must honor the laws set down by the Ancients."

—Babylon 5, "Moments of Transition"