The Phantom Quotes

the phantom of social justice tormented him. ~ Victor Hugo

What I got in exchange for my false prosperity was only a fearful destruction, a cold mask, and a pitch-dark castle like a mausoleum that the Phantom made. ~ Mizuki Nomura

They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of their own imagination. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists. ~ Robert Coover

I had always been a fan of Nas, but I never met him. This is the one guy in the industry who's, like, the phantom rapper. ~ Kelis

I originally wanted to go into sports, but my first concert was KISS at the shooting of 'KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park.' The minute I saw Gene and Paul ... it was all over. I knew that's what I wanted to do. ~ Steven Adler

If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ~ Gaston Leroux

This was life, I supposed, running and running and running, and realizing along the way that the phantom was getting closer. ~ Jane Hamilton

King Kong, Count Dracula, and the Phantom of the Opera are just looking for love, like the rest of us. ~ Mason Cooley

Like two old philosophers, Ashvin and James spoke of the ruin of their lives, their unfulfilled needs, their unanswered prayers and ultimately they were seduced by the phantom call to death by suicide its science, its poetry, its violence, its art. ~ Peter Akinti

Callum didn't need a lifetime's experience of seeing ghosts to know that the creature was not of this world.
For a long moment, he stared at the phantom. What was it? And why was it following him? ~ Adam Slater

When a man devotes himself body and spirit to a single object, if he has training and aptitude, no matter how mediocre he may be in ordinary affairs, he will produce something so nearly akin to a work of genius as to deceive half the judges who think themselves competent to decide between genius and talent.
("The Phantom Model") ~ Hume Nisbet

We need, in effect, to make the phantom 'lock-boxes' around the trust fund real. ~ Alan Greenspan

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

To love those who despise us, and to give one's hand to the phantom who tries to frighten us? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

My country is handed over from one tyrant to the next,
a worse tyrant; from one prison to another,
from one exile to another.
It is colonised by the observed
invader and the hidden one;
handed over by one beast to two
like an emaciated camel.
In the caverns of its death
my country neither dies
nor recovers. It digs
in the muted graves looking
for its pure origins
for its springtime promise
that slept behind its eyes
for the dream that will come
for the phantom that hid.
It moves from one overwhelming
night to a darker night.
My country grieves
in its own boundaries
and in other people's land
and even on its own soil
suffers the alienation
of exile. ~ Abdullah Al Baradouni

The Phantom, as well as being backed up by that music, it just so was a role that I identified with so powerfully. From the first second that I walked on to perform. ~ Gerard Butler

The phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My ~ H.P. Lovecraft

You've heard shards of our voice in the phantom-radio code of a numbers station in the roar of a crowd - in the screams of your clock - in the scrape of a chalkboard - in the snow static of a TV - in the chainsaw-decibel mating of cicadas - in the urban mythos that spreads amongst children like contagion - in the silence between lies.

White noise becomes a cadence. Words develop self-awareness. Viral. Evolving. Living poetry. Sentient language. ~ Joshua Alan Doetsch

I read the Phantom comics when I was in Australia shooting 'Dead Calm' and when one of the crew told me that there were plans for a movie, I went for it. That was in 1987 and I told (producer) Graham Burke I was going to be the Phantom. We had a laugh about that recently because you usually get what you deserve, not what you desire, and that is especially true in Hollywood! ~ Billy Zane

Any one of my many shrinks could tell you that I was looking for my father. Wasn't everyone? The explanation didn't quite content me. Not that it seemed wrong: it just seemed too simple. Perhaps the search was really a kind of ritual in which the process was more important than the end. Perhaps it was a kind of quest. Perhaps there was no man at all, but just a mirage conjured by our longing and emptiness. When you go to sleep hungry you dream of eating. When you go to sleep with a full bladder you dream of getting up to pee. When you go to sleep horny you dream of getting laid. Maybe the impossible man was nothing more than a specter made of our own yearning. Maybe he was like the fearless intruder, the phantom rapist women expect to find under their bed or in their closets. Or maybe he was really death, the last lover. ~ Erica Jong

At last, I came to the Lost Dog's Home which my map told me marked teh turnoff to Shelly Beach.
You could hear some of the dogs barking, calling out for their owners to come and get them away from there ...
I hated going to those places because I always wanted to take all the dogs home or let them go free, even though I knew most of them would go straight out and be hit by a car or starve to death. I sometimes wished I could have a place where I could take those dogs and let them live. The Phantom had this sanctuary called Eden and all the animals there lived together, even tigers and baby deer, because they'd never learned it's kill or be killed. The maneaters ate fish out of the lagoon and the island was protected by the Bandar poison pygmies and by the piranha fish in the lagoon. I would have liked there to be such a place for pets who had been dumped of abandoned. They could feed the owners to the piranha. ~ Isobelle Carmody

The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone
Portent or promise
and gives way To pale, meek Dawn. ~ Herman Melville

How perverse! just when everything seems to be in order and as families gather round the table to have supper,the phantom of the superclass appears,selling impossible dreams:luxury,beauty,power.And the family falls apart ~ Paulo Coelho

It's a thought," I said with a grin.
"That's exactly what it is, Dan - a thought - no more real than the shadow of a shadow. Consciousness is not In the body; the body is In Consciousness. And you Are that Consciousness - no the phantom mind that troubles you so. You are the body, but you are everything else, too. That is what your visions revealed to you. Only the mind resists change. When you relax mindless into the body, you are happy and content and free, sensing no separation. Immortality is Already yours, but not in the same way you imagined or hope for. You have been immortal since before you were born and will be long after the body dissolves. The body is in Consciousness; never born; never dies; only changes. The mind - your ego, personal beliefs, history, and identity - is all that ends at death. And who needs it?" Socrates leaned back into his chair.
"I'm not sure all of that sank in."
"Of course not." He laughed. "Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last. ~ Dan Millman

Were I a man," she struck a fencing pose and swept her hand before her as if it held a razor-sharp rapier, "I'd fix him thus!" She stabbed once, twice, thrice, then whipped the imaginary tip across her victim's throat. Delicately she wiped the phantom blade and restored it to an equally airy scabbard. "Were I a man," she straightened to stare pensively through the window, "I'd assure myself that braggart knew the error of his ways and henceforth would bend to seek his fortune in some other corner of the world." She caught her reflection in the crystal panes and folding her hands, struck a demure pose. "Alas, a brawling lad I am not, but a mere woman." She turned her head from side to side to inspect the carefully arranged raven tresses, then smiled wisely at her image. "Thus my weapons must be my wit and tongue."
-Erienne ~ Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

I always found it weird when the Phantom would call Raoul insolent boy and the Raoul was obviously older than him. ~ Hugh Panaro

I'm an obsessive musical theatre person, so some of the most formative albums for me were, you know, the 'Phantom Of The Opera' soundtrack or 'Into The Woods.' ~ Allison Williams

Every generation must loose its innocence, must see the brightly painted nursery wall smashed away by the wrecking ball of betrayal to reveal a blighted landscape. For our predecessors, it was the Somme, the Great Depression, the Holocaust or Vietnam; for my generation, it was The Phantom Menace ~ David Mitchell

There's a beast in all of us, you know,' Jasper said.
'No,' Tessa said.
'Yes, a monster right inside of us all,' Jasper said.
They wondered what theirs looked like. They faced each other and blinked while making faces to try to capture the phantom. ~ Cecil Castellucci

There is no river in the world to be compared for majesty and the witchery of association, to the Thames; it impresses even the unreading and unimaginative watcher with a solemnity which he cannot account for, as it rolls under his feet and swirls past the buttresses of its many bridges; he may think, as he experiences the unusual effect, that it is the multiplicity of buildings which line its banks, or the crowd of sea-craft which floats upon its surface, or its own extensive spread. In reality he feels, although he cannot explain it, the countless memories which hang for ever like a spiritual fog over its rushing current.
("The Phantom Model") ~ Hume Nisbet

The Brown Coast"
"Not long after the affair had run its course, Bob and his wife were driving to town when Vicky looked up and saw the phantom outline of a woman's footprint on the windshield over the glove box. She slipped her sandal off, saw that the print did not match her own, and told Bob that he was no longer welcome in their home. ~ Wells Tower

Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment") ~ James Grant

What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world`
With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)??
And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering.
Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time.
Get my point? ~ Chris Colfer

What! Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion? Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face? Would you equate artifice and sincerity? Confound appearance with truth? Regard the phantom as the very person? Value counterfeit as cash? ~ Moliere

For the Phantom, there is only one girl. For Sam, there is only one horse. ~ Terri Farley

They bear down upon Westminster, the ghost-consecrated Abbey, and the history-crammed Hall, through the arches of the bridge with a rush as the tide swelters round them; the city is buried in a dusky gloom save where the lights begin to gleam and trail with lurid reflections past black velvety- looking hulls - a dusky city of golden gleams. St. Paul's looms up like an immense bowl reversed, squat, un-English, and undignified in spite of its great size; they dart within the sombre shadows of the Bridge of Sighs, and pass the Tower of London, with the rising moon making the sky behind it luminous, and the crowd of shipping in front appear like a dense forest of withered pines, and then mooring their boat at the steps beyond, with a shuddering farewell look at the eel-like shadows and the glittering lights of that writhing river, with its burthen seen and invisible, they plunge into the purlieus of Wapping.
("The Phantom Model") ~ Hume Nisbet

I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth. ~ Norton Juster

He saw her seldom now, and the phantom of cradle songs had almost faded from his brain. ~ Stephen King

With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by [his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion
like the phantom pain of an amputee. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Oh, captive, bound, and double-chained!" cried the phantom, "who does not understand the toll of a lifetime of incessant labor by man, an immortal creature! For this flesh must pass into eternity before the good of which it is capable can be understood. How tragic not to know that a Christian spirit working kindly in its little realm of influence, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for the vast opportunities it has to be useful. Not to know that no regret can ever make amends for one missed life's opportunity! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I! ~ Charles Dickens

Christine:
In sleep he sang to me
In dreams he came.
That voice which calls to me,
And speaks my name.
And do I dream again?
For now I find,
The phantom of the opera is here,
Inside my mind

Phantom:
Sing once again with me ,
Our strange duet.
My power over you,
Grows strenger yet.
And though you turn from me,
To glace behind.
The phantom of the opera is there,
Inside your mind
♥ ♥ The Phantom of the Opera ♥ ♥ ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber

Every man in the western suburbs who resembled the phantom picture was subjected to long, scrutinizing looks. These men went home and looked at themselves in the mirror, saw no resemblance whatsoever. In the evening, in bed, they wondered if they should change something about their appearance in the morning or would that seem suspicious? It would turn out they didn't need to bother. People would soon have something else to think about. Sweden would become a changed nation. A violated nation. That was the word that was continually used: violated. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist

Well we'd just seen Gerry. I think he wanted somebody who had that authority and was handsome. The thing is, he's a big hunk isn't he? All I can say, if you look at his chat line, or the Phantom website, it's quite worrying. Because the girls really seem to love him. ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber

Guard your throats and hide your eyes. He's not dead, you fools. Legends never die. ~ A.G. Howard

This was the worst story yet. The phantom life that might have been. ~ Louise Penny

The Phantom Menace is not a masterpiece, but it's an example of how imagination, craftsmanship, and technological bravura can fashion superior entertainment out of something that is far from flawless. ~ James Berardinelli

I believe, my lady, that life is the phantom, and love still more fleeting and elusive - here one minute like a sweet scent you can't quite recognize and gone the next. Best enjoy both while you can. ~ Dawn Hammill

[Kinsey's studies included] stutterers, amputees, paraplegics, even those with cerebral palsy were observed. Kinsey wanted to document the full spectrum of human sexuality, but it was more than that. He believed these people might have things to teach us about the physiology of sex. And he was right. These groups alerted Kinsey--and the scientific community as a whole--to the complicated and crucial role of the central nervous system in sex and reproduction. Kinsey had noted that a stutterer in the throes of sexual abandon may temporarily lose his stutter. Similarly, the phantom limb pain some amputees feel temporarily disappears. Even the muscle spasticity of cerebral palsy may be briefly quieted. The body's limiting factors seem to get shut off. The organism is driven toward nature's singular goal--conception, the passing on of one's genes--and anything that stands in the way is pushed into the background. ~ Mary Roach

His supper still remained spread; and going to the front door, and softly setting it open, he returned to the room and sat as watchers sit on Old-Midsummer eves, expecting the phantom of the Beloved. But she did not come. ~ Thomas Hardy

The superhero, his underwear bagging at the seat and knees, is just a country boy at heart, tutored to perceive all human action as good or bad, orderly or dynamic, and so doesn't know whether to shit or fly. ~ Robert Coover

We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light. ~ Virginia Woolf

When Daniel Boone goes by at night
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

Snoopy Ned Nickerson went to the cupboard
To find Nancy Drew a clue.
But when he got there,
Each cupboard was bare
And so there was no clue for Drew. ~ Carolyn Keene

Mourning is never really complete. The mappings of the old play remain in the cortex, like those mappings of the phantom limb. ~ Robert A Berezin

I want to reassure fans that I am 100% involved and will continue working on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; I'm determined to make it the greatest game I've directed to date. Don't miss it! ~ Hideo Kojima

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Through silent alleys where dark shadows fleeted past them like forest beasts on the prowl; through bustling market-places where bloaters predominated, into crammed gin-palaces where the gas flashed over faces whereon was stamped the indelible impression of a protest against creation; brushing tatters which were in gruesome harmony with the haggard or bloated features.
(The Phantom Model ~ Hume Nisbet

So Aeneas pleaded, his face streaming tears.
Three times he tried to fling his arms around his neck,
three times he embraced--nothing...the phantom
sifting through his fingers,
light as wind, quick as a dream in flight. ~ Virgil

At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face. "Here again!" he said. "Here again," replied the Phantom. "I see you in the fire," said the haunted man; "I hear you in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night." The Phantom moved its head, assenting. "Why do you come, to haunt me thus?" "I come as I am called," replied the Ghost. "No. Unbidden," exclaimed the Chemist. "Unbidden be it," said the Spectre. "It is enough. I am here. ~ Arnold Bennett

The Phantom is not famous for forgiveness. ~ A.G. Howard

What we talk about less often, because it is harder to explain, is the way a perfume can give breath and body to the phantom selves that waft about us as we go through our days -- not just the showgirl, the femme fatale, and the ingenue, but all the memories and dreams of the taller, meaner, sharper, sweeter, softer people we have been or long to be. ~ Alyssa Harad

They stand beside a grave. Hermann sprinkles upon it a powder, which falls in sparkles of light from his fingers. The earth begins to heave; and presently, as a volcano casts up its ashes, the grave empties itself. Slowly and slowly, like the rippling waves of a becalmed ocean, it rises to the surface, divides, and falls in crumbling heaps on either side. Then there ascends the venerable figure of an aged man, clothed in robes of purple and scarlet, the ensigns of senatorial dignity. At the same moment, the spectre arm, by wondrous motion of its own, tears itself aloft, and becomes a dimly gleaming torch; each livid finger sending forth pale red dusky flames, which fling a horrid glare upon the cadaverous features of the phantom. ("The Forsaken Of God") ~ William Mudford

A dark and towering shadow, rising like the phoenix from the ashes ... malevolent ... omnipotent ... The Phantom of the Opera! ~ Susan Kay

I had to get used to wearing a mask and wearing a prosthetic and performing with those things while singing and expressing myself through stylized movement, while keeping it as human as possible so the audience could be closer to the horror of the Phantom. ~ Gerard Butler

And is it worth while to remain true to an ideal that offers only the vaguest hopes of realization? It is not philosophy. When one has made up one's mind that one wants a dish of hot stewed mushrooms, and set one's heart on it, should one scorn a handful of raw evaporated apples, if one were starving, for the sake of the phantom dish of hot stewed mushrooms? Should one say, Let me starve, but I will never descend to evaporated apples; I will have nothing but a dish of hot stewed mushrooms? If one is sure one will have the stewed mushrooms finally, before one dies of starvation, then very well. One should wait for them and take nothing else. ~ Mary MacLane

There was one I did called 'The Phantom,' and we did a sequel to that called, 'Return of the Phantom.' I thought there was wonderful stuff in that. There was another show I love called 'Man Beast,' where I was the star, and I turned into a Beast; one of those things. It was great fun because I didn't let the stuntman work at all. ~ David Hedison

All of us, I suspect, imagine that a world exists from which we alone have been excluded; all of us have our noses pressed against the glass. But if we contemplate our own lives, not the phantom life on the other side, we might find things in them to envy-a family that's intact; a job we like; excellent health (the thing we take for granted and on which all happiness depends). Good fortune is there, however sporadic, however modest, however difficult to achieve. The trick is to recognize it. ~ James Atlas

But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daae, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the Opera Comique after it had been produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in FAUST, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it.

Daae revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room.

- Chapter 2: The New Margarita, from The Phantom of the Opera ~ Gaston Leroux

Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou art not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be for ever dead. Scarce, then, wilt thou be able to recall the features of the phantom. Thou wilt then know that which thou canst not now dream. Thou hast not yet looked the Truth in the face, hast as yet at best but seen him through a cloud. That which thou seest not, and never didst see save in a glass darkly - that which, indeed, never can be known save by its innate splendour shining straight into pure eyes - that thou canst not but doubt, and art blameless in doubting until thou seest it face to face, when thou wilt no longer be able to doubt it. ~ George MacDonald

You hear about Broadway your whole life, and I learned what it meant to work on Broadway in 'The Phantom of the Opera.' ~ Aaron Lazar

Not much to be perfectly honest! I thought The Phantom Menace was terrible, except for the Pod Race. ~ David Prowse

Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh? ... When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know! ... Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant!
-Erik in The Phantom of the Opera ~ Gaston Leroux

I am scarred Mr. Courtemain not blind drop the gun and join me. ~ The Phantom

Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all? ~ Casey McQuiston

I don't get pat down, you know what's on the waist,
I don't mean Jazz when I say I "count base."
Fly Louis sneakers, Purple Tape coming out the speakers,
Bumped into my high school teachers,
They said I wouldn't be nothing, sitting on the bleachers.
Now I'm sitting in the Phantom, trynna figure out the features.
I'm a big fish now, I watch for the leeches. ~ Sheek Louch

You know what, despite my complaints about The Phantom Menace and Episode II, when Episode III comes out I'll be first in line. I genuinely love it. ~ Simon Pegg

I'm still wondering about the Phantom in the chair, you know at the end of Phantom [of the Opera], so I guess that's my sort of idiocy. I still haven't figured out how they do that. ~ Katherine Shindle

This is most people's reality: As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the ego. ~ Eckhart Tolle

It's not easy losing someone," she said. "It never goes away, does it?" "The Phantom Pain, they call it," I said. "Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs. ~ John Boyne

The voice of Time, ' said the Phantom, 'cries to man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone--millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died-- to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check! ~ Charles Dickens

Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera. ~ Gaston Leroux

The phantom of the man-who-would-understand,
the lost brother, the twin
for him did we leave our mothers,
deny our sisters, over and over?
did we invent him, conjure him
over the charring log,
nights, late, in the snowbound cabin
did we dream or scry his face
in the liquid embers,
the man-who-would-dare-to-know-us?
It was never the rapist:
it was the brother, lost,
the comrade/twin whose palm
would bear a lifeline like our own:
decisive, arrowy,
forked-lightning of insatiate desire
It was never the crude pestle, the blind
ramrod we were after:
merely a fellow-creature
with natural resources equal to our own. ~ Adrienne Rich

I landed the role of Bravo 5, the only female fighter pilot in 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.' I did my bit and fired my guns, but I haven't a notion of which side I was on or who I was firing the guns at. ~ Celia Imrie

How do you hate someone who pulled you from the brink of death, not once, but twice? ~ A.G. Howard

He looked like the Phantom of the Opera. ~ Cassandra Clare

We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away. ~ Mark Twain

What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment? ~ Ivan Turgenev

Ultimately, the loss becomes immortal and hole is more familiar than tooth. The tongue worries the phantom root, the mind scans the heart's chambers to verify its emptiness. There is the thing itself and then there is the predicament of its cavity. ~ Karen Green

He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

But the longing was the phantom ache of an amputated limb. It was part of her, and most of the time she didn't notice. But certain moments were like reaching for something with a hand that wasn't there. ~ Carrie Vaughn

Dreaming: the phantom of self-illusion emanating visions that change every night
Living: the phantom of universal self-illusion emanating the huge vision of the world that takes millenniums to change ~ Jack Kerouac

sheepishly sauntered in, still cautious and aware that the phantom ~ Wesley Thomas

I think Mike Gibbons was probably the greatest boxer that ever put a glove on. They called him The Wizard, The Phantom of the ring and he was that. I boxed with Mike about ten years and I never really hit him a hard punch during the time. Repeating again, Mike was one of the great boxers of the age. ~ Tommy Gibbons

Nothing is greater than to break the chains from the bodies of men - nothing nobler than to destroy the phantom of the soul. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I grew up in the age of radio. That was my main boyhood form of entertainment: lying on the living room floor with my ears affixed to the radio. I loved shows like 'The Phantom,' 'Cisco Kid,' and even 'Happy Theater' when I was younger. ~ George Takei

I decided to go and see another film, just to take my mind off Star Wars, and noticed that a film called The Matrix was playing in the same theatre. Two hours later, I re-emerged into the street full of the excitement and satisfaction that The Phantom Menace had failed to inspire. The Matrix seemed fresh and cool and visually breathtaking; making wonderful, intelligent use of CGI to augment the on-screen action, striking a perfect balance of the real and the hyperreal. It was possibly the coolest film I had ever seen. Ironically, fraternal directing team the Wachowskis faltered quickly with their sequels, killing their baby in just three years. Credit to George Lucas, it took him twenty-five to murder his. ~ Simon Pegg

There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest. ~ Tahir Shah

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

If we want to keep the old language, still using such terms as "spiritual" and "material," the spiritual must mean "the indefinable," that which, because it is living, must ever escape the framework of any fixed form. Matter is spirit named. After all this, the brain deserves a word for itself! For the brain, including its reasoning and calculating centers, is a part and product of the body. It is as natural as the heart and stomach, and, rightly used, is anything but an enemy of man. But to be used rightly it must be put in its place, for the brain is made for man, not man for his brain. In other words, the function of the brain is to serve the present and the real, not to send man chasing wildly after the phantom of the future. ~ Alan W. Watts