“Shadows avaunt, Richard’s himself again!”
– Ivanhoe, deadlifts
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me. It’s who’s going to stop me.”
– Ayn Rand, bent-over rows
“I slew him, tumty-tum.”
– P.G. Wodehouse (Bertie Wooster misquoting Thomas Hood), seated rows
“I am a leaf on the wind; watch me soar.”
– Wash, “Firefly,” assisted pullups
“MORE WEIGHT”
– Giles Corey, Salem Witch Trials, bench press
“MANLINESS WITHOUT OSTENTATION I LEARNED FROM MY FATHER”
– Marcus Aurelius, Medituations, squats and box jumps
“Death [exhale] is my gift [inhale].”
– Buffy the Vampire Slayer, bicep curls
“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.”
– Thomas Malory, Morte D’Arthur, kettlebell swings
“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
– Homer, walking lunges
“EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY”
– T.H. White, The Once and Future King, dips
“I am half agony, half hope.”
– Jane Austen, Persuasion, seated fly
“Beauty! Terrible Beauty!
A deathless Goddess!”
– Homer, pushups (assisted, if I’m being honest)
“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
– Homer, whenever I pass in front of the full-length mirror
Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.