Mummified Quotes

The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century - it was actually mummified, skin and all - but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire. ~ Adam Savage

I bet you say that to all the formerly mummified girls you meet. ~ Anna Durand

Osiris, to go directly to the important part of this, was not a "dying god," not "life caught in the spell of death," or "a dead god," as modern interpreters have said. He was the hallucinated voice of a dead king whose admonitions could still carry weight. And since he could still be heard, there is no paradox in the fact that the body from which the voice once came should be mummified, with all the equipment of the tomb providing life's necessities: food, drink, slaves, women, the lot. There was no mysterious power that emanated from him; simply his remembered voice which appeared in hallucination to those who had known him and which could admonish or suggest even as it has before he stopped moving and breathing. And that various natural phenomena such as the whispering of waves could act as the cue for such hallucinations accounts for the belief that Osiris, or the king whose body has ceased to move and is in his mummy cloths, continues to control the flooding of the Nile. Further, the relationship between Horus and Osiris, 'embodied' in each new king and his dead father forever, can only be understood as the assimilation of an hallucinated advising voice into the king's own voice, which then would be repeated with the next generation. ~ Julian Jaynes

At first it seemed to be no more than a chance ray of light beamed into the vestibule by the shifting of a tree-bough between house and street lamp, but as we kept our eyes glued to it we saw that it was a form - a tall, attenuated, skeletally-thin form moving stealthily in the shadow.

Slowly the thing emerged from the gloom of the doorway, and despite the warning I had had, I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck just above my collar, and a feeling as of sudden chill ran through my forearms. It was tall, as we had been told, fully six feet from its bare-boned feet to hairless, parchment-covered skull; and the articulation of its skeleton could be seen plainly through the leathery skin that clung to the gaunt, staring bones. The nose was large, high-bridged and haughty, like the beak of a falcon or eagle, and the chin was prominent beneath the brownish sheath of skin that stretched drum-tight across it. The eyes were closed and showed only as twin depressions in the skull-like countenance, but the mummified lips had retracted to show a double line of teeth in a mirthless grin. Its movements were irregular and stiff, like the movements of some monstrous mechanical doll or, as Edina Laurace had expressed it, like a marionette worked by unseen wires. But once it had emerged from the doorway it moved with shocking quickness. Jerkily, and with exaggeratedly high knee-action, it crossed the lawn, came to the sidewalk, turned on its parchment-soled feet as if ~ Seabury Quinn

Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified. ~ Alan W. Watts

Bran grabbed my hand,pulled me to a chest, and swung the heavy lid open. A white cloth covered the contents. He jerked it aside. Human heads filled the chest.
"Oh God."
He scooped a mummified head from the chest by a scalp lock and thrust it at me. "All of them are mine."
This was officially the weirdest version of "come down to my place and I'll show you some etchings" I've ever been hit with. ~ Ilona Andrews

It was a crypt where music played to masses of the dead, and McJagger was their desolate pharaoh, a walking mummified king. I remembered it well. ~ Red Tash

La Dorada skulked into view. She was half-mummified, but sodden. Gooey.
Regin let out a low whistle. The Mummy Returns meets Dingoes Ate My Face. ~ Kresley Cole

How far have we strayed from our essential natures. Just the sight of blood can make some men faint, and people scurry to hide such horrors from the public eye, hosing down sidewalks where blood has spilled, or covering children's eyes when violence erupts on the television. Humans have lost touch with who, and what, they really are.
Some of us, however, have not.
We walk among the rest, normal in every respect; perhaps we are more normal than anyone else because we have not allowed ourselves to be wrapped and mummified in civilization's sterile bandages. We see blood, and we do not turn away. We recognize its lustrous beauty; we feel its primitive pull.
Everyone who drives past an accident and cannot help but look for the blood understands this. Beneath the revulsion, the urge to turn away, throbs a greater force. Attraction.
We all want to look. But not all of us will admit it. ~ Tess Gerritsen

No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem. Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship. Thank God, we have an empty tomb. The glorious fact that the empty tomb proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes. Death is not a wall, but a door. ~ Peter Marshall

Being polite does not mean being mummified. ~ Judith Martin

Tell me about mummies.
Mummies exist. The Egyptians mummified people. Mummies that get up out of their cursed tombs and walk around do not exist.
Do cursed tombs exist?
No. Sometimes you get a tomb guarded by a demon.
Zombies?
The voudun kind, yes - the braaaaaaaiiiiinnnnnsss kind, no.
Oh, oh, I've got one. What about a haunted car?
Do you count a demon-powered motorcycle?
No, like, the car talks back and tells you to kill people.
Then no. ~ Cassandra Clare

Spartacus," I called, "how's it hanging?" Probably not too well. Once you're dead, had your organs removed, and are resurrected as an undead mummified cat, your testicles probably looked like old raisins that had rolled under the couch. Raisins didn't tend to ... hang. ~ Rob Thurman

...Women have preserved this `baby look' for as long as possible so as to make the world continue to believe in the darling, sweet little girl she once was, and she relies on the protective instinct in man to make him take care of her.
As with everything a woman undertakes on her own initiative, this whole maneuvre is as incredible as it is stupid. It is amazing, in fact, that it succeeds. It would appear very shortsighted to encourage such an ideal of beauty. For how can any woman hope to maintain it beyond the age of twenty-five? Despite every trick of the cosmetics industry, despite magazine advice against thinking or laughing (both tend to create wrinkles), her actual age will inevitably show'- through in the end. And what on earth is a man to do with a grown-up face when he has been manipulated into considering only helpless, appealing little girls to be creatures of beauty?

What is a men to do with a woman when the smooth curves have become flabby tires of flesh, the skin slack and pallid, when the childish tones have grown shrill and the laughter sounds like neighing? What is to become of this shrew when her face no longer atones for her ceaseless inanities and when the cries of `Ooh' and Ah' begin to drive him out of his mind? This mummified `child' will never fire a man's erotic fantasy again. One might think her power broken at last.

But no, she still manages to get her own way - and for two reasons. The first is obvious: she now has child ~ Esther Vilar

Even gods decay. Like, in 1890 somebody sold off thousands of mummified Ancient Egyptian sacred cats - _for fertilizer_. Get the point? Constancy isn't. ~ Jonathan Gash

Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind - preserved in an urn - thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organi ~ Stanisław Lem

...I see fetal sciences in you,
mummified poems, and bones
of my romantic secrets
and old innocence.

Shall I hang you on the wall
of my emotional museum,
beside the dark, chill,
sleeping irises of my evil?

Or shall I spread you over the pines
―suffering book of my love―
so you can learn about the song
the nightingale offers the dawn?... ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

I was not certain what social rules applied to the delayed discovery of one's wife's mummified body, ~ Elizabeth Peters

Tyrus pushed the mummy off him and rose, whisking sloughed bits of dried flesh from his tunic.
"Well, that wasn't at all humiliating," he said. "Please tell me I didn't shriek. And if I did? Remember I am of imperial lineage. Lie to me."
"You didn't shriek," Moria said. "Still, it is a shame Simeon wasn't here to record the encounter for posterity. Prince Tyrus, attacked by a mummified monk. Truly though, it looked more like a monkey. A crazed monkey, clinging to you -"
"Enough," he said with a feigned scowl. "Speaking of monks, did they see ...?"
He looked around. Ivo had sidled off as they opened the box. Now he huddled with the other two a hundred paces away.
"Well, at least they didn't bear close witness," Tyrus muttered.
"You needn't worry," Ashyn said. "Two of them had taken vows of silence."
"Though they might have been tempted to break them," Moria said. "To relay that particular story."
"But I did not shriek, correct?"
She smiled. "You did not shriek. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Is it a mausoleum, and I, the Egyptiab, mummified with pillows and my own flesh, through some oversight enbalmed alive? There must be some mistake. ~ Margaret Laurence

This is a very marvelous thing. A winter thing, when everything is pickled and preserved under glass. You can taste summer in this mixture, summer boiled down and soaked in brine, mummified, packed with spices to be born again on this table, in this place, in this snow. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Yo, beautiful. Come pop this collar off me."
Natalya hissed, "Are you mad?"
"What's she gonna do? Vivisect me? Imprison me? We've got a pact to fulfill,remember?"
To Dorada, she cried, "Seriously, sweetheart, shake that mummified ass over here."
Regin kicked the glass. "Lemme the fuck out - "
La Dorada swung her head around,peering at Regin with her one eye.
"Okay. That's freaky. Lookit, Gollum, if you spring me, I'll help you find your Precious. ~ Kresley Cole

I'm building a glass pyramid over the Egyptian escalator where my body will be mummified, so my customers can come and see me forever. ~ Mohamed Al-Fayed

The news might be single-handedly trying to bring about an environmental catastrophe, which it will then report on. Super injunctions are interesting legal weapons really, they don't just gag the press, they gag them from mentioning the existence of the gag. Sport belongs in a news bulletin about as much as a mummified cat's head belongs in a Caesar salad. Combine the "mounting pressure" with the "growing cause" and you've got yourself a "media whirlwind" which you can also refer to. ~ Charlie Brooker

It was in this situation that she penetrated as a vague shape into the existence of Thomas. Everything there appeared desolate and mournful. Deserted shores where deeper and deeper absences, abandoned by the eternally departed sea after a magnificent shipwreck, gradually decomposed. She passed through strange dead cities where, rather than petrified shapes, mummified circumstances, she found a necropolis of movements, silences, voids; she hurled herself against the extraordinary sonority of nothingness which is made of the reverse of sound, and before her spread forth wondrous falls, dreamless sleep, the fading away which buries the dead in a life of dream, the death by which every man, even the weakest spirit, becomes spirit itself. ~ Maurice Blanchot

I'm sure the makers of Downy would be pleased to know that their product makes even mummified human skin soft and fragrant. ~ William M. Bass

Principled hate is a hell of a lot stronger than "Boy, I wish you hadn't mummified me and thrown me into the lake" hate. ~ John Green

The coded message is a lifeless thing, mummified and entombed. To the would-be cryptologist we must offer the same advice we would give the grave-robber, the spelunker, and the sorcerer of legend: beware what you dig up; it is yours. ~ Jedediah Berry