Literature is full of quotes that stick with us—quotes that have the ability to change our lives and incite powerful emotions. While most of your attention may be on the insights from positive and reinforcing quotes, the ominous ones that speak of ensuing destruction, can offer just as much in the way of entertainment and value.
For this year’s anniversary of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption, here are 5 spine-chilling bookish quotes of impending doom.
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science
“The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas!”
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Sheev Palpatine – Darth Plagueis
“You useless old fool who forged the most powerful Sith Lord the galaxy has ever known and yet, who forgot to leave a place for himself. Whose pride never allowed him to question that he would no longer be needed. Rest easy in your grave, Plagueis…”
James Luceno and DuduFilm
The One Ring – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
In the Land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
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Macbeth – Macbeth
“This is a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.”
William Shakespeare
Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy: The Inferno
“Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk of things other than the good.”
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Featured Image Via Storyworks Scholastic.