Profound sayings?

[UltimaGabe]

Hey, everyone.

My next character in an upcoming campaign is going to be a Wu Jen from the Oriental Campaigns setting. As a result, I wanted to go along with the stereotypes and make my character's speech into a sort of "Confucious-esque" type of thing. Basically, I wanted my character to, at various points during roleplaying, to be able to come up with some sort of profound saying that makes everything better (or, at least, just sounds funny). However, the problem is that I, as a person, am not able to come up with profound sayings very easily, and so I was hoping for a little help.

What I wanted to do is to make a few "Prodound Saying Templates"- that is, something along the lines of "The ______ (noun) may ______ (verb), but does not _____ (verb) if it is _______ (adjective)". Then, I could have a chart of random nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on to roll randomly on when I need a profound saying. How's that sound?

Anyway, before I can do this, I need a few actual profound sayings- such as those by Confucious or someone- to use as templates (taking out the important words) as well as some suggestions for nouns, adjectives, verbs, and the like to put in my lists.

Any suggestions?

 

[jester47]

Just type "confucious say" into a search engine.

Aaron.

 

[Teflon Billy]

My senile great grndmother once told me "..and apple is an orange when their is a canoe under the grapevine....

She also is famed for telling me (a few years before she was truly out there) that "You can lead a gift horse to water, but you can't look him in the mouth"

I'm certain there is some wisdom in there somehwere.

 

[Patman21967]

Confucious say: Man who stand on toilet, high on pot
Confucious say: baseball wrong, man with 4 balls CANNOT walk

I can keep going

 

[Tinner]

Read "The Thief of Time"

It's a Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, and you could easily rip off a lot of the lines Lu-Tze quotes about the Way of Mrs. Cosmopolite.
Is it not written, 'You are so sharp you'll cut yourself?'
Does it not say in the Way verily "I was not born yesterday?"
Lots of witty, humorous sayings.

 

[argo]

I played a Dragon Clan Monk in an OA game a while back and I also wanted my character do the "cryptic quotes" thing (the guy had a Wisdom of 23). I did a few google searches and came up with some "confucious say" type things but I was a real pain to try and remember them all and shoehorn them into conversation in-game.

So instead what I wound up doing was I sat and thought about what philosophical ideals were most important to my character. I decided that Duty and Service (note the capital letters) were most important to him. Then what I would do is look for some excessively verbose way of name-dropping those ideals into conversation. For example I might say something like: "Duty demands patience, I will wait here in the garden and meditate while you finish your shopping."

It worked prety well. Within a session or two one of the other PC's had decided to nickname me "Honeytongue" but that's another story

 

[Glyfair]

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/rel/tao/TaoTeChing.html is a good source.

 

[Quickleaf]

spiritual sayings

"We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong - the amount of work is the same."
-Don Juan (in Journey to Ixtlan)

"God is only for you - it is the only justification for a single tear."
-Hafiz

"Light up a fire of love within my soul. Burn up these thoughts and words from head to toe."
-Hafiz

"To change a person must face the dragon of his appetites with another dragon - the life energy of the soul."
-Rumi

"A great silence overcomes me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language."
-Rumi

 

[diaglo]

the monk player in our campaign brought a box of fortune cookies with him to every session. when he needed a saying he'd open and eat a cookie.

it worked great.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I used a Wu Jen-esque NPC once who was always saying cryptic things to the PCs.

Some of my favorites:

"It matters not if the horse is blind; you must load the cart anyway."

"The kabuki is not finished until the sumo sings of swans."

"A journey of a thousand steps is best started after a rousing farewell party."

"The crane who hunts the frog is in turn hunted by the rickshaw."

"The hyena laughs because he knows your secrets."

"If a man in the forest expresses his opinion with no women around, is he still wrong?"

"Does a frog not bump his ass when he attempts to fly?"