Bard Quotes & Sayings

Homer then has the bard - a blind man whose name is Demodocus, which means "popular with the people" - say something that drives far into the center of what Homer means and why Homer matters: "The gods did this and spun the destruction of people / For the sake of the singing of men hereafter." The song, this poem, this story, is the divine — Adam Nicolson

I absolutely knew that I wanted to play role-playing games when I saw a friend of mine playing 'Bard's Tale 2' on his Commodore 64. — Chris Avellone

A man of your valor deserves not another breath. — Craig R. Key

I almost never let reality get in the way of a good story. — Elizabeth Bard

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows — Kelly Armstrong

Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield. — Bill Bryson

Oh yes, your relationship with Miss Bard is positively ordinary."
"Be quiet."
"Crossing worlds, killing royals, saving cities. The marks of every good courtship. — V.E Schwab

And I myself a Catholic will be,
So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.
Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the Poets militant below. — Abraham Cowley

A bard's down-to-earth love: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red and when she walks, treads on the ground ... — John Geddes

Dammit, Bard, you're going to set the cat on fire." Lila — V.E Schwab

Yes," said Cooley. "That is the question, as the Bard might say." "The Bard?" "What's so funny?" said Cooley. "Nothing, sir," I said. "I just didn't know people still used that term." "Well, I'm a people, Burke. Am I not?" "Of course." "If you prick me, do I not bleed, you scat-gobbling, mother-rimming prick?" Occasionally Dean Cooley reverted to a vocabulary more suited to his marine years, but some maintained it was only when he felt threatened, or stretched for time. "Yes, sir," I said. — Sam Lipsyte

I know where you sleep, Bard." She smirked. "Then you know I sleep with knives. — V.E Schwab

One can fight money only with money! from my Tale Of The Rock Pieces. — Ivan Stoikov

I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others. — Charlaine Harris

Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen, To follow half on which the eye dilates Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken Than those whereof such things the bard relates, Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates? — George Gordon Byron

Even though we don't admit it, every single one of us aspires to be like somebody, whether they live in the world today, within the bard's lyrics, or on the pages in the Library — Evan Meekins

Usher: Why do you play only on the black keys [of the piano]? I suppose you think black is good enough for the proletariat. You play on all the keys only for the bourgeoisie, is that it?
Oleg Bard: Please, citizen, please! I'm concentrating on the white ones!
Usher: So you think white is best? Play on both!
Oleg Bard: I am playing on both!
Usher: So you compromise with [the] Whites, opportunist! — Vladimir Mayakovsky

The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame, Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-fam'd sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain. — Robert Blair

Richard Curtis, the writer and director of Love Actually, is brilliant at many things, but his genius, I submit, is for thrusting characters into situations in which they feel driven to humiliate themselves. Which is why we love them, especially when it's all in the name of love. He is the Bard of Embarrassment. — David Edelstein

I was living "every girl's" dream. But I had yet to find my own passion, my personal project, the thing that would help make Paris mine. — Elizabeth Bard

What so pure, which envious tongues will spare?
Some wicked wits have libell'd all the fair,
With matchless impudence they style a wife,
The dear-bought curse, and lawful plague of life;
A bosom serpent, a domestic evil,
A night invasion, and a mid-day devil;
Let not the wise these sland'rous words regard,
But curse the bones of ev'ry living bard. — Alexander Pope

The first game I actually bought myself with my own money was 'The Bard's Tale.' — Markus Persson

How do you explain plastic to a medieval forest bard? — Jefferson Smith

Don't be angry," the Bard said. "Most people live inside a cage of their own expectations. It makes them feel safe. The world's a frightening place full of glory and wonder and, as we've both discovered, danger. Flying isn't for everyone. — Nancy Farmer

It's simple: Women who pick at their food hate sex. Women who suck the meat off of lobster claws, order (and finish) dessert- these are the women who are going to rip your clothes off and come back for seconds. — Elizabeth Bard

I consider Anne of Green Gables to be a mentor, Jane Austen to be a writing hero, and the Bard a fellow name freak like myself. — Lorilee Craker

Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that didn't set, a cut that wouldn't close.

It was better not to care--Lila tried not to care--but sometimes, people got in. — Victoria Schwab

Names are important," she said, twirling the cord. "Mine is Ojka, and I have orders to keep you out." Beyond the doors, Kell let out a scream of frustration, a sob of pain. "My name is Lila Bard," she answered, drawing her favorite knife, "and I don't give a damn." Ojka — V.E Schwab

I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's. — Jack Prelutsky

You know, Miss Bard, there is such a thing as being sharp enough to cut yourself. — V.E Schwab

Ah, there you are, Bard," came a familiar voice, and she turned to see Alucard striding over.
"Saints, is that a dress you're in? The crew will never believe it."
"You've got to be kidding me," growled Kell. — V.E Schwab

And when I told you the tale o' Bael the Bard and how he plucked the rose o' Winterfell, I thought you'd know to pluck me then for certain, but you didn't. You know nothing, Jon Snow. — George R R Martin

Shakespeare, in some sense, helped create the modern man, didn't he, his influence is that pervasive. He held the mirror up to nature, but he also created that mirror: so the image he created is the very one we hold ourselves up to. — Jess Winfield

A French portion is half of an American portion, and a French meal takes twice as long to eat. You do the math. — Elizabeth Bard

In Paris the past is always with you: you look at it, walk over it, sit on it. — Elizabeth Bard

You don't have to flay him with it. He's the son of a poet and has the soul of a bard. — Teal Ceagh

The contemporary Matthew Paris wrote that, 'foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the foulness of King John'. A bard sang that 'no man may ever trust him, for his heart is soft and cowardly'. Yet this evil was catalyst for a greater good, Magna Carta. — Simon Jenkins

Happy the bard, (if that fair name belong
To him that blends no fable with his song)
Whose lines uniting, by an honest art,
The faithful monitors and poets part,
Seek to delight, that they may mend mankind,
And while they captivate, inform the mind.
Still happier, if he till a thankful soil,
And fruit reward his honorable toil:
But happier far who comfort those that wait
To hear plain truth at Judah's hallow'd gate — William Cowper

Polite fictions are very important for dragons. — Bard Bloom

People grow, but they don't change. — Elizabeth Bard

The A.D. says, "To quote the Bard, 'We happy, chosen few are a band of brothers and sisters, and will be kicking arse on St. Whatever-The-Bloody Day it was'." "It's St. Crispin's Day, you heathen." Mary regards him blandly. "That's not even close to the original quote. Your Shakespeare is terrible." He smiles impishly. "Why, thank you. — Heather Lyons

I am what I am," Ty said. "And what is that?" Ariane asked. "A bartender. Always happy to make new acquaintances." He nodded at Bard. "Or to provide guests with drinks. Anyone thirsty? — Neal Stephenson

He was still open to the magic of this place. I didn't know a lot of people who were open to magic at all. — Elizabeth Bard

Styles differ, but the faces remain — Bard Constantine

The average clan - and there were more than fifty of them in 1745 - was no more a family than is a Mafia "family." The only important blood ties were those between the chieftain and his various caporegimes, the so-called tacksmen who collected his rents and bore the same name. Below them were a large, nondescript, and constantly changing population of tenants and peasants, who worked the land and owed the chieftain service in war and peacetime. Whether they considered themselves Campbells or MacPhersons or Mackinnons was a matter of indifference, and no clan genealogist or bard, the seanachaidh, ever wasted breath keeping track of them. What mattered was that they were on clan land, and called it home. — Arthur Herman

Don't get yourself killed."
"I'll do my best," said Kell, and then he was going.
"And come back," added Rhy.
Kell paused. "Don't worry," he said. "I will. Once I've seen it."
"Seen what?" asked Rhy.
Kell smiled. "Everything. — V.E Schwab

I heard it stated that, on one occasion, during one of Alastair's visits to his friend "Mr Lachlan," the famous divine requested the bard to compose a poem on the "Resurrection of Christ." To this he demurred and told Mr Lachlan in Gaelic that "he knew more about such matters himself, and should try his own hand — Various

99% of natural poets discovered their talents through love letters. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I am ashes where I once was fire, And the bard in my bosom is dead; What I loved I now merely admire, And my heart is as grey as my head. — William Shakespeare

Another Celtic legend tells of the duel of two famous bards. One, accompanying himself on the harp, sang from the coming day to the coming of twilight. Then, when the stars or the moon came out, the first bard handed the harp to the second, who laid the instrument aside and rose to his feet. The first singer admitted defeat. — Jorge Luis Borges

The thinnest thing in the world is the border between good and evil ... my next The Opposite Of Magic. — Ivan Stoikov

We're all here for a reason, Bard. Some reasons are just bigger than others. — V.E Schwab

No, no," said Taran slowly, "It would be folly to think of attacking them." He smiled quickly at Fflewddur. "The bards would sing of us," he admitted, "but we'd be in no position to appreciate it. — Lloyd Alexander

It was safe to assume he'd not only read the play but then re-read it, cross-referenced the annotations, and probably joined an online chat group called Buds of the Bard or something equally nerdy — Simon Holt

I personally believe that I was ... a previous life or something ... a previous reincarnation, a bard of some sort, because most of the things I write about are descriptions of places I've never been to. — Marc Bolan

There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved. — Michael Ende

Have it compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!" [sic] ... .
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide."
("The First Sally (A) or The Electronic Bard"
THE CYBERIAD) — Stanislaw Lem

As the Bard says, 'Be just and fear not. — Ellie Alexander

Teaching is a sacred art. This is why the noblest druid is not the one who conjures fires and smoke but the one who brings the news and passes on the histories. The teacher, the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of men's minds and bodies, especially when he roams without allegiance to one chieftain or another. But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists upon telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice. — Kate Horsley

For the record, I'm not an indecisive person, and I'm not a coward. I just have a very detailed imaginary life, and it sometimes takes precedence over what's actually happening around me. — Elizabeth Bard

It was better not to care but sometimes, people got in. Like a knife against armor, they found the cracks, slid past the guard, and you didn't know how deep they were buried until they were gone and you were bleeding on the floor. — V.E Schwab

First of all, simply clawing or breathing at somedragon once isn't real fighting. Small people usually use words for what we mean by that. They might say, oh, "Your mother copulated extramaritally with a black poodle, and from this union you were born." Dragons just attack, once, instead. It's just as expressive. — Bard Bloom

A parallel to this system of punishment is the trauma caused by enforced unemployment in capitalist society. Add to this an inability for the unemployed to find any imaginable alternative occupation, and the extent of the effects of network exclusion becomes clear. — Alexander Bard

A society that has no respect, no regard for its bards, its historians, its storytellers, is a society in steep decline, a society that has lost its very soul and may never find its way. — Laurence Overmire

Everybody who meddles with Shakespeare biography readily accepts that the Bard was unfaithful to his wife and excuses him for it, but infidelity on the part of his wife is sufficient to justify estrangement. — Germaine Greer

A bard whom there were none to praise,
And very few to read. — Hartley Coleridge

I'm not the girl who swings from the chandeliers and screws men because she can, fixing her lipstick in the rear view mirror of a cab hailed at dawn. I'm the girl you call Wednesday for Saturday. The girl who reads Milton for fun and knows a fish fork when she sees one. A flirt maybe, but in that harmless, nineteenth-century, kiss-my-hand-and-ask-me-to-waltz kind of way. Mostly, I'm a thinker, a worrier. Since I'm a New Yorker, you can take that last bit up a notch. It's not that there's no free spirit in me. But it's a free spirit with a five-year plan. — Elizabeth Bard

Oleg Bard: I understand, but by virtue of that power of imagination which, according to [Georgi] Plekhanov, is granted to Marxists, I can already see as through a prism, so to speak, the triumph of your class as symbolized by your sublime, ravishing, elegant, and class-conscious wedding! — Vladimir Mayakovsky

In the three months since I'd moved to Paris, I hadn't been to a single party. I was eager to get dressed up and go somewhere, dying to talk to somebody other than the guy who sold me my zucchini. — Elizabeth Bard

Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling. — Robertson Davies

Fools!" said Bard. "Why waste words and wrath on those unhappy creatures? Doubtless they perished first in fire, before Smaug came to us." Then even as he was speaking, the thought came into his heart of the fabled treasure of the Mountain lying without guard or owner, and he fell suddenly silent. He thought of the Master's words, and of Dale rebuilt, and filled with golden bells, if he could but find the men. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that didn't set, a cut that wouldn't close. — V.E Schwab

We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana? — Gary Shteyngart

Oh, I should add, I'm not looting the city, but the people I heal often bring me gifts. I've got a statue of a dog made of gold with bright ruby eyes that dates back two thousand years. I've got the best television set that Arucu Corporation made last year. And I've got a piece of slightly used butcher paper with a crayon drawing of something that might be me or might be a spider, I'm not sure which, with the words "THAK YOU DRRON GRAGON" written on it. And various other treasures. — Bard Bloom

Knowing all the languages in the world could help you to really understand all the jokes you can hear ... from my future Kids' Funny Business. — Ivan Stoikov

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've been the head of the photography program at Bard College for over 30 years, and I take that as seriously as I do my photography. My time is devoted to that too. — Stephen Shore

The artist envies what the arties gains, The bard the rival bard's successful strains. — Hesiod

Conformity is one of the nihilistic temptations of rebellion which dominate a large part of our intellectual history. It demonstrates how the rebel who takes to action is tempted to succumb, if he forgets his origins, to the most absolute conformity. And so it explains the twentieth century. Lautreamont, who is usually hailed as the bard of pure rebellion, on the contrary proclaims the advent of the taste for intellectual servitude which flourishes in the contemporary world. — Albert Camus

We can't all turn blood and whispers into weapons. — V.E Schwab

All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency. — Marvin Mudrick

Now go. An actor should know when to leave the stage, a poet when the lay is finished, and a bard when it is time to put aside the lute. — Raymond E. Feist

I find myself anticipating a new kind of storyteller, on who is half hacker, half bard. — Janet H. Murray

an arsenal of serious tools that needed to be sworn at to work properly. — C. Bard Cole

His touch was like a bard's on his instrument, and it awakened a deep and mysterious music in my body. — Juliet Marillier

The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard's performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew — Andrzej Sapkowski

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels. — P.J. Harvey

You can't go back and make a new start, but you can start right now and make a brand new ending. — James R. Sherman

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk'd among the ancient trees.

Calling the lapsed Soul
And weeping in the evening dew:
That might controll,
The starry pole;
And fallen fallen light renew!

O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.

Turn away no more:
Why wilt thou turn away
The starry floor
The watry shore
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.

- "Introduction to the Songs of Experience — William Blake

They weren't tears of sadness or even tears of joy. I was just overflowing. Like so many things since I'd been here, I didn't yet understand it, but I felt it. — Elizabeth Bard

Are you ready ?" she asked, spinning the chamber.
Kell gazed through the gate at the waiting castle. "No."
At that, she offered him the sharpest edge of a grin.
"Good," she said. "The ones who think they're ready always end up dead. — V.E Schwab

Titles available in the Harry Potter Series (in reading order): Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Other titles available: Quidditch Through the Ages Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them The Tales of Beedle the Bard Read — J.K. Rowling

Writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away. — Ian Doescher

Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him. — Jose Marti

She used to think that if she stole enough, the want would fade, the hunger would go away, but maybe it wasn't that simple. Maybe it wasn't a matter of what she didn't have, of what she wasn't, but what she was. — V.E Schwab

Oh! blame not the bard. — Thomas Moore

The genesis of my interest in being a writer can be traced to fourth grade when we listened to a radio production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and I asked the teacher if I could rewrite it for our class to present. Nothing like going head-to-head with the Bard, right?
I can still visualise the pages I filled creating this first "great" literary endeavor. Encouraged by teachers (and one doting grandmother), I went on to write reams of yearbook copy in high school and college and, then, to teach high school English. My "real" writing career didn't begin until I turned from education to the full-time pursuit of storytelling. — Laura Abbot

Miss Hermione Jean Granger, I leave my copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, in the hope that she will find it entertaining and instructive. — J.K. Rowling

Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd — Robert Burns