Answers

[cahn]

1. "Modified rapture!" (Double points for "Oh joy, oh rapture!")

The first is from the Mikado; the second from... apparently every single G&S ever made, but I personally was thinking of the climax of Pirates of Penzance ("Summon your men and effect their capture!"), the only G&S I have large swaths of memorized.

ETA: Story via janewilliams20:
"Another interesting change from what Gilbert originally wrote is Nanki-Poo's "Modified rapture" on learning that Yum-Yum is to marry Ko-Ko but doesn't love him. Gilbert originally wrote simply, "Rapture", but at a rehearsal felt that Durward Lely, as Nanki-Poo, was putting too much into the word, so called out "Modified Rapture". Lely, misunderstanding, repeated, "Modified Rapture", which so pleased Gilbert that the line remained thus."

2. "Never trust a god who grins all the time and wears a top hat, that's my motto." "Is it? That's a strange motto."

Pratchett. We use "That's a strange motto" practically every week, but I had no idea it was from Reaper Man until I made up this list (for some reason I thought I remembered it from one of the Guards books).

3. "We have top men working on it now." "Who?" "Top. Men."

This is from the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and shows up here mostly because D just found out I had never seen it and forcefed it to me last month, and we can't seem to stop quoting that particular bit :)

4. They departed into their own country another way.

KJV, Matt 2:12. It's really a little... perhaps unfortunate how many uses we seem to find for this one, especially when we're taking shortcuts or trying to avoid someone.

5. "My days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."

From "Our Mrs. Reynolds" in Firefly, Mal talking to Jayne.

6. "The Horse! I have been asking for nothing else for an hour!" [This may be a conflation of two quotations from the same source]

Brust, possibly every single one of the Viscount of Adrilankha books. I totally love those books and Paarvi and the faux-Dumas style.

7. "I don't want all the marbles. I don't want any of the marbles. It's death for me to be caught with marbles in my possession, remember?"

Miles to Ivan in Warrior's Apprentice. I'm glad Bujold got in there somewhere, although if I had been actually cherrypicking I'm not sure I would have picked that particular one...

8. "I'm retired!" "As am I, Robert, as am I. And yet... here we are."

Edna Mode to Mr. Incredible in The Incredibles. Edna may very well be my favorite movie character of all time. The Incredibles is only not my favorite animated film of all time because of my slavish devotion to Spirited Away.

9. ...a larj swety slof...

The entire sentence is "I doan no if u ½ evir had a larj swety slof wif kopeyis qwantities ov fungis on itz pelt sqweez past u in a confined spaice" and it is Bascule from Iain Banks' Feersum Endjinn, which is the only book by Iain Banks I have ever actually read and liked, and that took me two tries because of Bascule's irritating spelin.

10. She took the point at once, but she also took the spoons.

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins (what a great name!), this is, of course, from Fellowship of the Ring. I'm glad some Tolkien made it, because I would have felt silly making such a list without any.

11. "Don't you forget me, - -." "I would never."

Lilly to Veronica Mars at the very end of Season 1. Veronica Mars Season 1 is the greatest season of TV ever. That is all.

12. "That girl is slow!"

Aeryn watching Sesame Street in Farscape Season 4. And it is probably worth watching Farscape (though I'd start with end of season 2; season 1 and first bit of 2 nearly bored me out of watching it at all) to understand why Aeryn watching Sesame Street is so utterly hilarious.


This was fun!

ETA: I forgot to put this in the post! janewilliams20 told me an awesome story about (1) - it's in the comments, but I've added it above as well.

Comments

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks.

Here is the comment that I did on the earlier post in rot13:

I was totally wrong about joy and rapture - it is in the finale of Pinafore.

But the modified is indeed in Mikado, the first time the lovers get together alone, after Yum-Yum says that although she is going to marry Koko, she doesn't love him. There is laughing song and joyous cheer in the finale, but no joyous rapture.

But there is indeed rapture in Pirates, when the young ladies react to the sudden appearance of the police, at the end of Act II.

and added here: that was the General reacting, not his wards. And I had it in front of me. Going on, is it only in G&S land that old men wind up with bevies of beautiful wards, nary a one is over the age of twenty-one? Well, Koko only had one. And I suppose the Admiral has to make do with sisters, cousins, and aunts. They probably wouldn't let him get wards. I notice these are the most popular operettas, though. I guess the Gondoliers is pretty good, but there are two pretty wards. Male, though.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Yes, when I googled it myself to make sure I had the following line right Pinafore came up before Pirates, and then I felt a bit silly, though I blame G&S for their characters always being so joyously rapturous :)

Hmm, this is true-- this old-men-with-beautiful-wards thing never seems to happen in real life, though I wonder if it was at least slightly more common in Victorian ages. (The Secret Garden comes to mind as a book where there is a young girl ward, though she isn't particularly beautiful and too young to be seductive, so I'm more inclined to trust that picture.) I have always been a little miffed, myself, that the guys seem to get all the great songs-- in the Mikado, for instance, the guys getting the trio "I am so proud" (what a terribly awesome song) and the girls getting the trio "Three little maids" (bleah) :)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm reasonably familiar with at least half those sources(I count 7 of the 12, for a loose definition of reasonably; if you use a tighter one it drops a bit), yet I could only place one of the quotes with any certainty, and a couple more were vaguely familiar. Other lines stick for me, I suppose.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

And many of these lines I'm not sure I'd be able to get if I saw them written down like this-- some of them (like the Edna Mode) delivery is key. And this is definitely a "here are lines that turned out, sometimes by D, to be applicable to a specific situation in the last week" rather than "here are the lines I myself find most memorable," which I bet you'd do *much* better at placing :) Hmm... maybe I'll do that, if I have more time this week.

Okay, I'm curious-- which one was the one you could place with certainty? I'm going to guess the Tolkien first and the Brust second.

(I would LOVE to see your top ten!)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

No, the Bible one. I know scripture MUCH better than Tolkien or Brust.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Ok, cool. I didn't guess that only because I realized after posting that I should've prefaced the quote with "being warned in a dream"-- I wasn't sure that as it stood it couldn't be confused with, I don't know, someone taking a detour past Saturn or something?? whereas I knew the Tolkien and Brust wouldn't be confused with anything else.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Well, to be fair, in this case "with certainty" means "I know it's there but it could be from somewhere else echoing that phrasing". The Brust one was familiar, but it kind of sounds Pythinesque, out of context. I hanest don't recognize the Tolkien at all, but I haven't actually read them since junior high; I mean to reread them; I just haven't gotten around to it. If I'd had to make a guess, I'd've guesssed either Austen/one of her contemporaries or one of the modern writers influenced by those authors.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I've Googled the "modified rapture" bit since answering. Here's the first copy of the full story I found: http://www.algss.org/GandS.aspx

"Another interesting change from what Gilbert originally wrote is Nanki-Poo's "Modified rapture" on learning that Yum-Yum is to marry Ko-Ko but doesn't love him. Gilbert originally wrote simply, "Rapture", but at a rehearsal felt that Durward Lely, as Nanki-Poo, was putting too much into the word, so called out "Modified Rapture". Lely, misunderstanding, repeated, "Modified Rapture", which so pleased Gilbert that the line remained thus."

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool, thanks! That is an awesome story. I was totally going to mention that in the post and forgot... I'll go add that right now.