“Just to be safe, let’s marry our cousins.” “To be safe from what?” “…Just to be safe. For safety.” – Dynastic Egypt
Clubs: Mathletes, Model UN, Astronomy Club, Yearbook Committee, City Planning Club, 4-H – Ancient Mesopotamia.
“Quiet, you.” – Sparta
“Oh, do we have to have a god? Fine. Fine. We pick…fire. That fire over there, our god is fire now, you must respect our religious views and our religious views are that fire is amazing.” – Ancient Persia
“Carthage must be…something something.” – The Roman Republic
“Lemons and oregano, we’re set. Let’s never change.” – Hellenistic Greece
“Hello, I’m Cai Lun. You may have noticed that I have invented paper. Here, have some. It’s nothing. I can make more. If you’d like to have sex with me, as the inventor of paper, I certainly would not object.” – The Han Dynasty
“Hmm, yes. Interesting. But…can we have sex with it?” – The Roman Empire
“Just to be safe, let’s poison all of our cousins.” “To be safe from what?” “…Just to be safe. For safety.” – The Middle Ages
“Oh, just let the Habsburgs have it, if they want it so much.” – The Renaissance
“Hello, hi. I’m Ben Franklin. You should have sex with me. I’ve invented newspapers.” – The Enlightenment
“We have no formal affiliation with any future overpriced novelty hardware stores.” – The Restoration
“Ben Franklin again. You should have sex with me. I’ve invented the fire department, and possibly bifocals. You won’t need them now, of course, but eventually they’ll come in very handy, especially if you want to read the newspaper in twenty years. Which I also invented.” – The Enlightenment again
“Just to be safe, let’s marry our cousins.” “To be safe from what?” “…Just to be safe. For safety.” – Regency England
Tags: can we have sex with it, history, my historical knowledge is admittedly shaped by a very limited form of western-centric education, yearbook quotes
Is this where we record our actual yearbook quotes, for posterity? Because mine was, “I want to hold a mirror up to society and then win World Record for Biggest Mirror – Tracy Jordan”
oh my god how old are you?? are you even old enough to be on the internet right now?
I’m 20 D: (you can also tell my age because of the new fangled emoticons I use)
I was at a 90s-themed roller rink party recently. A 20 Year Old, who was DJing, said, “sorry, I hope the music is okay, I don’t really know any of this stuff? From the 90s? Because I was born in 1993, like…so.”
And then he pronounced Coolio “cool leo.”
In 1993, I was older than the DJ is now (and so was Coolio), so now Coolio and I are just gonna go grab some Geritol and rest our aching backs.
So many lolz at “cool leo.” That’s amazing.
YES PLEASE.
“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” Douglas Adams.
Mine was a quote from “The Fugitive”.
…Look, I loved the movie, and I had a really, really hard time in high school, and “Geez, does this guy ever quit?!” was one of the few things I could be proud of at the time.
… wait people seriously remember their yearbook quotes?
wait people had yearbook quotes?
For real — there were about a thousand students in my senior class; if we’d all had quotes, the yearbook would have looked like the Oxford English Dictionary. Even if they restricted it to the people who were actually graduating.
Oof. 90 here (and they didn’t all graduate), public school.
I’m actually not 100% on mine, but close. I’ll have to check next time I visit my mom.
Mine was a bleak Metallica lyric because I was ~so edgy~. “Do you look to the sky just before you die? It’s the last time you will.”
I love how teenagery this is. We didn’t have yearbook quotes, but if we’d had, there’s a 99.999% chance mine would have been an Ani Difranco lyric.
MINE WAS 100% AN ANI LYRIC
it was about how religion is stupid because we should all love people or something (okay I totally remember it, it was from “Up Up Up Up Up Up” but that’s the only clue you get)
Good choice! If we were high school buds I would’ve appreciated the shit outta that and responded in your yearbook with: “Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky. Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry.”
The one on S&M is my favorite ’cause it’s sped up and has strings. >.>
Mine was “Fools! I’ll destroy you all!”
I have yet to destroy even one of them 🙁
“You can’t change the world, but you can make a dent” from Death to Smoochy.
“You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.” — Jospeh Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”
At the time I thought I was incredibly avant garde, pioneering a new way of yearbooking free of Dr. Seuss quotes.
Being grown up isn’t half as fun as growing up:
These are the best days of our lives.
The only thing that matters
is just following your heart
and eventually you’ll finally get it right.
– “In This Diary” by the Ataris
Yes, I hate myself too
I don’t remember my yearbook quote, but our graduation quotes (what the announcer… announced? while I was walking up to the stage to get my diploma) had to be Bible verses, and mine was basically a religious version of Hamlet’s “to thine own self be true.” Slightly subversive at the tender age of 18!
I never had one of these. Am I a freak? Have I lost my chance at historical immortality?
I never had one–my school didn’t do quotes–and I feel that it ranks quite highly on the List of Things I Missed Out On.
We didn’t get our high school yearbooks until the year after. Which defeats the whole purpose! I’m sure they would have been filled with Mean Girls quotes and references to Harry Potter.
I don’t think yearbooks were really a *thing* in 1990’s England. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve crept in now, though, along with overly-flashy proms (instead of a staid and embarrassing end-of-year-dance, that I did not go to).
My school had one in ’99! Then again, we also had a prom. WTF was wrong with that school, I shall never know.
“But NOT the female cousins. We need them. For…reasons.” – The MIddle Ages
Also Ben Franklin’s conquests probably did need bifocals, the man wrote an entire essay on why fucking older women is the best.
It is here, if you don’t believe me: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/…
Oh my god, this is amazing. Thanks for linking.
ETA: OH MY GOD POINT #5 I AM DYING
this is the bestworst.
“they are so grateful!!” oh my god
I did not think he could have possibly ACTUALLY SAID THAT, but HE DID!!!
OMFG Ben Franklin was SUCH A DICK (which I knew but god did that letter ever underline it). I just…ugh. Whenever I know about shitty things done by Great Historical Men/Founding Fathers, I cannot think of their accomplishments without thinking about the shit as well. Thomas Jefferson, for instance – I can’t think about or read about him without also being reminded of Sally Hemings and what he did to her. I just marvel/cringe at how the people who did such amazing, world-changing things were at their root so awful towards anyone who wasn’t a rich white dude like them.
Yes, but could he mount a TV to the wall? I BET THAT’S WHY THEY WERE SO GRATEFUL.
My friend snuck in “I don’t feel the need to explain my art to you, Warren”, attributed to Ernest Hemingway.
This makes me so, SO happy.
“What’s with today, today?” would have been my senior yearbook quote if I were edgier/didn’t instead use quotes from musicals as tribute to my theater geek friends….
The one on S&M is my favorite 'cause it's sped up and has strings. >.>
While I respect everyone’s right to get excited about actual yearbooks and actual yearbook quotes, I can’t believe there aren’t more comments about how genius this is. Thank you, Mallory. This pretty much made my day, and I had to break my commenting silence (though I have adored everything on the Toast since day 1) in recognition.
Signed,
A Medievalist