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# Branches
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Tomb

"In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain."
    -Nathaniel Hawthorne
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# Features
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A gateway to Hell

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."
   -Dante Alighieri, _Divina Commedia_, "L'Inferno", Canto III. Circa 1315.
%%%%
A granite statue

"I met a traveller from an antique land
 Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
 Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
 And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
 Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
 The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
 And on the pedestal these words appear:
 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
 Nothing beside remains: round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
 The lone and level sands stretch far away."
    -Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias". 1818.
%%%%
A labyrinth entrance

"Maze-treaders, whose vision ahead and behind is severely constricted and fragmented, suffer confusion, whereas maze-viewers who see the pattern whole, from above or in a diagram, are dazzled by its complex artistry. What you see depends on where you stand, and thus, at one and the same time, labyrinths are single (there is one physical structure) and double: they simultaneously incorporate order and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos."
        -Mark Z. Danielewski, "House of Leaves". 2000.
%%%%
A one-way gate to the infinite horrors of the Abyss

"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
    -Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
%%%%
A portal to a secret trove of treasure

"'Stop thief! Stop thief!' There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the sound."
    -Charles Dickens, "Oliver Twist"
%%%%
A rock wall

"I know not whether Laws be right,
   Or whether Laws be wrong;
 All that we know who lie in gaol
   Is that the wall is strong;
 And that each day is like a year,
   A year whose days are long."
    -Oscar Wilde, "Ballad of Reading Gaol"
%%%%
A staircase to the Tomb

"In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain."
    -Nathaniel Hawthorne
%%%%
A tree

"Only YOU can prevent forest fires!"
    -Smokey the Bear
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# Items
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apple

"MINERVA was the goddess of wisdom, but on one occasion she did a very foolish thing; she entered into competition with Juno and Venus for the prize of beauty. It happened thus: At the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis all the gods were invited with the exception of Eris, or Discord. Enraged at her exclusion, the goddess threw a golden apple among the guests, with the inscription, 'For the fairest.'"
    -Bullfinch's Mythology, Chap. XXVII. a.
%%%%
apricot

"Apricot Ratafia

This is made two Ways, viz. either by infusing the Apricots cut in Pieces in Brandy for a Day or two, and then passing it thro' the draining Bag, and putting in the usual Ingredients; or else the Apricots may be boil'd in White wine, and by that Means more easily clarify'd adding an equal Quantity of Brandy, and a quarter of a pound of Sugar to every quart, with Cinnamon, Cloves, Mace, and Kernels of the Apricots. After all the Ingredients have infused eight or ten Days the Liquor is to be strain'd again and put into Bottles and so kept."
    -Charles Carter, _The Compleat City and Country Cook: Or, Accomplish'd House-wife_. 1732.
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bread ration

"It is further reported that in the provinces [Caesar] gave banquets constantly in two dining halls, in one of which his officers or Greek companions, in the other Roman civilians and the more distinguished of the provincials reclined at table. He was so punctilious and strict in the management of his household, in small matters as well as in those of greater importance, that he put his baker in irons for serving him with one kind of bread and his guests with another..."
    -Suetonius, _De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius_. 110 CE.
%%%%
choko

"I ought not to omit naming a vegetable which Mr Yates placed on our table, and to which he directed our attention. It was the Tchu-tchu (Sechium edule) called also by the people _pepinella_. It is a small gourd, very much like vegetable marrow; one seed covers a wall with its ramifications."
    -John Overton Choules, _The Cruise of the Steam Yacht North Star: A Narrative of the Excursion of Mr. Vanderbilt's Party to England, Russia, Denmark, France, Spain, Malta, Turkey, Madeira, Etc_. 1854.
%%%%
cloak

"O Bell my wife, why dost thou flyte?
   Now is now, and then was then:
 Seek now all the world throughout,
   Thou kens not clowns from gentlemen:
 They are clad in black, green, yellow and blue,
   So far above their own degree.
 Once in my life I'll take a view;
   For I'll have a new cloak about me."
    -Anonymous, "The Old Cloak". 16th Century.
%%%%
club

"Speak softly and carry a big stick."
    -Theodore Roosevelt
%%%%
dagger

"He drew his dagger, that was sae sharp,
   That was sae sharp and meet,
 And drave it into the nut-browne bride,
   That fell deid at his feit.

 'Now stay for me, dear Annet,' he sed,
   'Now stay, my dear,' he cry'd;
 Then strake the dagger untill his heart,
   And fell deid by her side."
    -English traditional ballad, "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet",
    circa 1650.
%%%%
gold piece

"Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites, finding him boiling turnips in the chimney corner, offered him a present of gold; but he sent them away with this saying; that he, who was content with such a supper, had no need of gold; and that he thought it more honourable to conquer those who possessed the gold, than to possess the gold itself."
    -Plutarch, "Marcus Cato"
%%%%
long sword

"Oh I won't get up, I won't get up,
   I can't get up for my life
 For you have two long beaten swords
   And I have but a pocket knife.

 Well it's true I have two beaten swords,
   They cost me deep in the purse
 But you will have the better of them
   And I will have the worst."
    -English traditional ballad, "Mattie Groves". Circa 1600.
%%%%
lychee

"The Litchi is the most celebrated native fruit of China. It is nearly round, about an inch and a half in diameter, the shell is tough, becoming brittle, of a chocolate brown colour covered all over with wart-like protuberances. When fresh it is filled with a white almost transparent, sweet, jelly-like pulp in which lies a rather large, shining, brown seed; the pulp is of a delicious sub-acid flavour when fresh. The Chinese dry it when it becomes black like a prune and thus preserve it for use throughout the year; in this state it is frequently to be seen in the London fruit shops."
    -John Smith, _A Dictionary of Popular Names of the Plants which Furnish the Natural and Acquired Wants of Man, in All Matters of Domestic and General Economy: Their History, Products, & Uses_. 1882.
%%%%
orange

"Conserve of Orange Peel

HAVING grated the rinds of some Seville oranges as thin as you can, weigh them, and to every pound of orange rind add three pounds of loaf sugar. Pound the orange rind well in a marble mortar, mix the sugar by degrees with them and beat all well together. Put it into gallipots and tie it down so as properly to prevent the air getting to it."
    -Francis Collingwood, John Woollams, _The Universal Cook: And City and Country Housekeeper._ 1792.
%%%%
potion

"Then gave I her, -- so tutor'd by my art, --
 A sleeping potion; which so took effect
 As I intended, for it wrought on her
 The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo
 That he should hither come as this dire night,
 To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
 Being the time the potion's force should cease."
    -William Shakespeare, _Romeo and Juliet_
%%%%
rambutan

"The rambutan (_nephelium lappaceum_) is a beautiful fruit to which I have already alluded, as resembling the mammoth arbutus; and you suppose them at first, when at a little distance from you, a delicious dish of some tropical strawberry. But you find on inquiring into the 'particulars within' the outer coat, that there is concealed beneath the red and hairy covering a semi-transparent pulp of a pleasant acid taste, enveloping a single oval and oblong seed. I know not but I am peculiar in my memory of the beautiful fruits of the straits, but none lingers in my recollection so sweetly in its clustered beauties of the fruit-dish as the bearded and rosy rambutan."
    -Fitch Waterman Taylor, _A Voyage Round the World And Visits to Various Foreign Countries, in the United States Frigate Columbia_. 1847.
%%%%
slice of pizza

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore."
    -Jack Brooks, "That's Amore"
%%%%
strawberry

"A Samurai was out walking when a large tiger began to chase him. The samurai ran for his life, never seeing the cliff under his feet. As he fell, he reached out and caught a vine that hung down. He looked down and saw another tiger circling below; the first tiger waited above. The vine began to give away. The samurai then saw a single strawberry growing on the vine. He reached out and ate the strawberry. How sweet it tasted!"
    -Attributed to various Japanese buddhist monks.
%%%%
sultana

"A Turkish garden was among the curiosities to which the Jew found access for Bentham. It was a sort of orchard of vines and other trees, without order or apparent arrangement. From that garden Bentham sent specimens of the Sultana raisin to England which he believed to have been the first of that species which had ever reached his country."
    -John Bowring, _The Works of Jeremy Bentham_. 1839.
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# Monsters
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__c_suffix

"When Peleus, some distance away, saw him torn apart by the frightful wound he shouted: 'Accept this tribute to the dead, at least, Crantor, dearest of youths, ' and with his powerful arm, he hurled his ash spear, at full strength, at Demoleon. It ruptured the ribcage, and stuck quivering in the bone. The centaur pulled out the shaft minus its head (he tried with difficulty to reach that also) but the head was caught in his lung. The pain itself strengthened his will: wounded, he reared up at his enemy and beat the hero down with his hooves. Peleus received the resounding blows on helmet and shield, and defending his upper arms, and controlling the weapon he held out, with one blow through the arm he pierced the bi-formed breast.'"
    -Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, XII 330
%%%%
__r_suffix

"How now? a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!"
    -William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, 4
%%%%
__cap-D_suffix

"On the other hand, Confucius is made to say to his disciples, 'I know how birds can fly, how fishes can swim, and how animals can run. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer may be shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao-tsze, and can only compare him to the dragon.'"
     -Life of Confucius

"This Dragon had Two furious Wings
   Each one upon each Shoulder;
 With a Sting in his Tail as long as a Flail,
   Which made him bolder and bolder.
 He had long Claws, and in his Jaws
   Four and forty Teeth of Iron;
 With a Hide as tough, as any Buff,
   Which did him round environ."

    -"An Excellent Ballad of a most dreadful Combat, fought between Moore of Moore-Hall, and the Dragon of Wantley", retold by Ambrose Philips, _A Collection of Old Ballads. Corrected from the Best and Most Ancient Copies Extant. With Introductions Historical, Critical, Or Humorous_. 1723.
%%%%
__cap-K_suffix

"The Parts Septentrionall are with these Sp'ryts Much haunted.. About the places where they dig for Oare. The Greekes and Germans call them Cobali."
    -Heywood, Hierarch. ix. 568, circa 1635
%%%%
__cap-O_suffix

"The little princess, asleep in her cradle, floated on the water, and at last she was cast up on the shore of a beautiful country, where, however, very few people dwelt since the ogre Ravagio and his wife Tourmentine had gone to live there-for they ate up everybody. Ogres are terrible people. When once they have tasted raw human flesh they will hardly eat anything else, and Tourmentine always knew how to make some body come their way, for she was half a fairy."
    -Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy, "'Orangier et l'Abeille". 1697.

"NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers."
    -Shrek. 2001.
%%%%
__cap-S_suffix

"The latter lived in the country, and before his house there was an oak, in which there was a lair of snakes. His servants killed the snakes, but Melampus gathered wood and burnt the reptiles, and reared the young ones. And when the young were full grown, they stood beside him at each of his shoulders as he slept, and they purged his ears with their tongues. He started up in a great fright, but understood the voices of the birds flying overhead, and from what he learned from them he foretold to men what should come to pass."
    -Apollodorus (apocryphal), Library and Epitome, 1.9.11. circa 150 BC. Sir James George Frazer, translator.

"A snake, with mottles rare,
 Surveyed my chamber floor,
 In feature as the worm before,
 But ringed with power."
    -Emily Dickinson, "In Winter In My Room"
%%%%
__cap-T_suffix

"Buckshank bold and Elfinstone,
 And more than I can mention here,
 They caused to be built so stout a ship,
 And unto Iceland they would steer.

 They launched the ship upon the main,
 Which bellowed like a wrathful bear;
 Down to the bottom the vessel sank,
 A laidly Trold has dragged it there."
    -George Borrow, _Lavengro_
%%%%
Aizul

"I went to Heaven --
 'Twas a small Town --
 Lit -- with a Ruby --
 Lathed -- with Down --"
    -Emily Dickinson, _I went to Heaven_
%%%%
Antaeus

"That country was then ruled by Antaeus, son of Poseidon, who used to kill strangers by forcing them to wrestle. Being forced to wrestle with him, Hercules hugged him, lifted him aloft, broke and killed him; for when he touched earth so it was that he waxed stronger, wherefore some said that he was a son of Earth."
    -Apollodorus (apocryphal), _Library and Epitome_, 2.5.11, circa 150 BC. Sir James George Frazer, translator.
%%%%
Asmodeus

"For myself, I have other occupations:  I make absurd matches; I marry greybeards with minors, masters with servants, girls with small fortunes with tender lovers who have none. It is I who introduced into this world luxury, debauchery, games of chance, and chemistry. I am the author of the first cookery book, the inventor of festivals, of dancing, music, plays, and of the newest fashions; in a word, I am ASMODEUS, surnamed The Devil on Two Sticks."
    -Alain René Le Sage, _Asmodeus: Or,The Devil on Two Sticks. 1707.
%%%%
Cacodemon

"We'll call him Cacodemon, with his black Gib there, his Succuba, his Devil's Seed, his Spawn of Phlegethon, that o' my Consience was bred o' the Spume of Cocytus."
    -John Fletcher, _The Knight of Malta_. 1647.
%%%%
Dispater

"Hoc idem magis ostendit antiquius Iovis nomen: nam olim Diovis et Diespiter dictus, id est dies pater; a quo dei dicti qui inde, et dius et divum, unde sub divo, Dius Fidius. Itaque inde eius perforatum tectum, ut ea videatur divum, id est caelum. Quidam negant sub tecto per hunc deierare oportere. Aelius Dium Fidium dicebat Diovis filium, ut Graeci Dioskopon Castorem, et putabat hunc esse Sancum ab Sabina lingua et Herculem a Graeca. Idem hic Dis pater dicitur infimus, qui est coniunctus terrae, ubi omnia ut oriuntur ita aboriuntur; quorum quod finis ortuum, Orcus dictus."
    -Marcus Terentius Varro, _De Lingua Latina_, Liber V, circa 40 BC.
%%%%
Dowan

"Skill and grace, the twin brother and sister, are dancing playfully on your finger tips."
    -Rabindranath Tagore, _Chitra, Act I, Scene IV_
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Duvessa

"Twin children: the Girl, she was plain;
 The Brother was handsome & vain;
 'Let him brag of his looks,'
 Father said; 'mind your books!
 The best beauty is bred in the brain.'"
    -Aesop & Walter Crane, _The Baby's Own Aesop: Brother & Sister_
%%%%
Edmund

"And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
 Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper.--
 Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"
    -Shakespeare, King Lear.

"When the forces stood in array Edmund proposed to decide their claims by single combat; but Canute saying that he, a man of small stature, would have little chance against the tall athletic Edmund, proposed, on the contrary, for them to divide the realm as their fathers had done."
    -Thomas Keightley, _The History of England_. 1839.
%%%%
Geryon

"Khrysaor, married to Kallirhoe, daughter of glorious Okeanos, was father to the triple-headed Geryon, but Geryon was killed by the great strength of Herakles at sea-circled Erytheis beside his own shambling cattle on that day when Herakles drove those broad-faced cattle toward holy Tiryns, when he crossed the stream of Okeanos and had killed Orthos and the oxherd Eurytion out in the gloomy meadow beyond fabulous Okeanos."
    -Hesiod, _Theogony_, circa 700 BCE.
%%%%
Killer Klown

"All the world loves a clown."
    -Cole Porter, "Be a Clown". 1948.
%%%%
Murray

"Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!"
    -Guybrush Threepwood, _The Secret of Monkey Island_
%%%%
Polyphemus

"...as soon as he had got through with all his work, he clutched up two more of my men, and began eating them for his morning's meal. Presently, with the utmost ease, he rolled the stone away from the door and drove out his sheep, but he at once put it back again--as easily as though he were merely clapping the lid on to a quiver full of arrows."
    -Homer, _The Odyssey_, Book IX
%%%%
Psyche

"Let Psyche's corpse be clad in mourning weed
 And set on rock of yonder hill aloft;
 Her husband is no wight of human seed,
 But serpent dire and fierce, as may be thought,
 Who flies with wings above in starry skies,
 And doth subdue each thing with fiery flight.
 The Gods themselves and powers that seem so wise
 With mighty love be subject to his might.
 The rivers black and deadly floods of pain
 And darkness eke as thrall to him remain."
    -Apuleius, _Asinus aureus_, "Cupid and Psyche"
    circa 160 AD. William Adlington, Translator, 1566.
%%%%
Sigmund

"But Sigmund turned him about, and he said: 'What aileth thee, son?
 Shall our life-days never be merry, and our labour never be done?'

 But Sinfiotli said: 'I have looked, and lo, there is death in the cup.'

 And the song, and the tinkling of harp-strings to the roof-tree winded up;
 And Sigmund was dreamy with wine and the wearing of many a year;
 And the noise and the glee of the people as the sound of the wild woods were
 And the blossoming boughs of the Branstock were the wild trees waving about;

 So he said: 'Well seen, my fosterling; let the lip then strain it out.'"
    -William Morris, _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs. 1891.
%%%%
Tiamat

"He saith that Tiamat our mother hath conceived a hatred for us,
 With all her force she rageth, full of wrath.
 All the gods have turned to her,
 With those, whom ye created, they go at her side.
 They are banded together, and at the side of Tiamat they advance;
 They are furious, they devise mischief without resting night and day.
 They prepare for battle, fuming and raging;
 They have joined their forces and are making war.
 Tiamat who formed all things,
 Made in addition weapons invincible; she spawned monster-serpents,
 Sharp of tooth, and merciless of fang;
 With poison, instead of blood, she filled their bodies.
 Fierce monster-vipers she clothed with terror,
 With splendor she decked them, she made them of lofty stature.
 Whoever beheld them, terror overcame him,
 Their bodies reared up and none could withstand their attack."
    -Enuma Elish, Third Tablet. circa 668 BCE.
%%%%
big fish

"And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?"
    -Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_. 1851.
%%%%
boggart

"He thinks every bush a boggart."
    -John Ray, _A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs_. 1768.

"A BOGGART intruded himself, upon what pretext or by what authority is unknown, into the house of a quiet, inoffensive, and laborious farmer; and, when once it had taken possession it disputed the right of domicile with the legal mortal tenant, in a very unneighbourly and arbitrary manner. In particular, it seemed to have a great aversion to children. As there is no point on which a parent feels more acutely than that of the maltreatment of his offspring, the feelings of the father and more particularly of his good dame, were daily, ay, and nightly, harrowed up by the malice of this malignant and invisible boggart."
    -C.J.T., _Folk-lore and Legends: English_  1890.
%%%%
bumblebee

"How doth the little busy Bee
     Improve each shining Hour,
 And gather Honey all the day
     From every opening Flower!"
    -Isaac Watts. 1715.
%%%%
bush

"And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."
    -KJV Bible, Ex3:2.
%%%%
butterfly

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
    -Nathaniel Hawthorne
%%%%
clay golem

"Once upon a time a great Cabbalist lived in Prague called the Rabbi Löw. He made a human figure of clay, and left a small aperture in the lesser brain in which he laid a parchment with the unutterable name of God written on it. The clod immediately arose and was a man; he performed all the duties of a servant for his creator, he fetched water, and hewed wood. All through the Jews quarter he was known as the Golem of the great Rabbi Löw. Every Friday evening the Rabbi took the parchment out of his head, and he was clay until Sunday morning. Once the Rabbi forgot this duty, all were in the Synagogue, the Sabbath hymn was begun, when all the women and children in the assembly started and screamed out, 'the Golem! the Golem is destroying everything!' The Rabbi ordered the precentor to pause at the end of the prayer: it was yet possible to save all, but later nought would avail, the whole world would be destroyed. He hastened home, and saw the Golem already seizing the joists of his house to tear down the building: he sprang forward, took the parchment out, and dead clay again lay at his feet."
    -Berthold Auerbach, _Spinoza_. 1882.
%%%%
efreet

"When the hoopoe returned to Solomon (he told him the news), and he responded (to Sheba's people): "Are you giving me money? What GOD has given me is far better than what He has given you. You are the ones to rejoice in such gifts." (To the hoopoe, he said,) "Go back to them (and let them know that) we will come to them with forces they cannot imagine. We will evict them, humiliated and debased." He said, "O you elders, which of you can bring me her mansion, before they arrive here as submitters?" One afrit from the jinns said, "I can bring it to you before you stand up. I am powerful enough to do this."
    -The Quran, Sura 27 Al-Naml
%%%%
ettin

"But he had not been long in his hiding-hole, before the awful Ettin came in; and no sooner was he in, than he was heard crying:
'Snouk but and snouk ben,
 I find the smell of an earthly man,
 Be he living, or be he dead,
 His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.'"
    -Joseph Jacobs, _The Red Ettin_
%%%%
flying skull

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it."
    -William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, V, 1. 1600.
%%%%
ghoul

"In the desert
 I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
 Who, squatting upon the ground,
 Held his heart in his hands,
 And ate of it.
 I said, 'Is it good, friend?'
 'It is bitter - bitter', he answered,
 'But I like it
 Because it is bitter,
 And because it is my heart.'"
    -Stephen Crane, _The Black Riders and Other Lines_. 1895.
%%%%
giant frog

"Hello, my baby
 Hello, my honey
 Hello, my ragtime gal

 Send me a kiss by wire
 Baby, my hearts on fire

 If you refuse me
 Honey, you'll lose me
 Then you'll be left alone

 Oh baby, telephone
 And tell me I'm your own."
    -Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard, "Hello My Baby!"
%%%%
giant snail

"Snail, snail, slug-slow,
 To me thy four horns show;
 If thou dost not show me thy four,
 I will throw thee out of the door,
 For the crow in the gutter,
 To eat for bread and butter."
    -Silesian rhyme, _Notes and Queries, Number 69_, 1851.
%%%%
gnoll

"Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him through knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind -- screams that came faster and faster until they were incoherent. And where they took him it is not good to ask, and what they did with him I shall not say."
    -Lord Dunsanay, "How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art Upon the Gnoles". 1912.
%%%%
goblin

"Swish, smack! Whip crack!
 Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
 Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,
 While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
 Round and round far underground
 Below, my lad!"
    -J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Hobbit_
%%%%
golden eye

"No coveting nor envy burns
   In thy bright golden eye,
 That calm and innocently turns
   On all below the sky."
    -Hannah Flagg Gould, _The Youth's Coronal_
%%%%
griffon

"As when a Gryphon through the wilderness,
 With winged course, o'er hill and moory dale,
 Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth
 Hath from his wakeful custody purloined
 His guarded gold."
    -Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Book II. 1667.
%%%%
harpy

"Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they are; abominable their droppings, their hands are talons, their faces haggard with hunger insatiable."
    -Virgil, Aeneid 3

"And Phineus had scarcely taken the first morsel up when, with as little warning as a whirlwind or a lightning flash, they dropped from the clouds proclaiming their desire for food with raucous cries. The young lords saw them coming and raised the alarm. Yet they had hardly done so before the Harpyiai had devoured the whole meal and were on the wing once more, far out at sea. All they left was an intolerable stench."
    -Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 179 - 434
%%%%
hobgoblin

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
    -Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%%%
hog

"Fern came slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. As she approached her chair, the carton wobbled, and there was a scratching noise. Fern looked at her father. Then she lifted the lid of the carton. There, inside, looking up at her, was the newborn pig. It was a white one. The morning light shone through its ears, turning them pink. "He's yours," said Mr. Arable. "Saved from an untimely death. And may the good Lord forgive me for this foolishness."
    -E.B. White, _Charlotte's Web_
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hound

"A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!"
    -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Excelsior"
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human

"Do you know
 Do I know
 What's this thing called 'man'?
 God only knows what a man is!
 I only know his price."
    -Bertolt Brecht, "The Measures Taken". 1930.
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imp

"The Devil, too, sometimes steals human children; it is not infrequent for him to carry away infants within the first six weeks after birth, and to substitute in their place imps."
    -Martin Luther
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jelly

"Beware of the Blob!
 It creeps
 And leaps
 and glides and slides
 Across the floor
 Right through the door
 And all around the wall,
 A splotch, a blotch..."
    -Burt Bacharach, "Beware of the Blob"
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Khufu

"And then I looked farther, beyond the pallid line of the sands, and I saw a Pyramid of gold, the wonder Khufu had built. As a golden wonder it saluted me, as a golden thing it greeted me, as a golden miracle I shall remember it."
  -Robert Hichens, _The Spell of Egypt_
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kraken

"... Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which [according to the pilots of Norway] is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our Öland is wide [i.e. less than 16 km] ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and are fed by him in return: for his meal, if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan writes, lasts no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the Leviathan of Job?"
    -Jacob Wallenberg, "Min son på galejan", 1781.
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Mara

"This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you, Mara, mighty among dreamers, mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more. Why did they struggle, deathgod against illusionist? You say their ways are incomprehensible, being the ways of gods. This is not the answer."
    -Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light", 1967
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Menkaure

"Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!
 I go, and I return not. But the will
 Of the great Gods is plain; and ye must bring
 Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
 Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
 The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days."
    -Matthew Arnold, _Mycerinus_

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manticore

"Ctesias writeth, that in Aethiopia likewise there is a beast which he calleth Mantichora, having three rankes of teeth, which when they meet togither are let in one within another like the teeth of combes: with the face and eares of a man, with red eyes; of colour sanguine, bodied like a lyon, and having a taile armed with a sting like a scorpion: his voice resembleth the noise of a flute and trumpet sounded together: very swift he is, and mans flesh of all others hee most desireth."
    -Pliny the Elder, _Natural History_, Book 8, Chapter XXI
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mermaid

"To the Sirens first shalt thou come, who beguile all men whosoever comes to them. Whoso in ignorance draws near to them and hears the Sirens' voice, he nevermore returns, that his wife and little children may stand at his side rejoicing, but the Sirens beguile him with their clear-toned song, as they sit in a meadow, and about them is a great heap of bones of mouldering men, and round the bones the skin is shrivelling."
    -Homer, _The Odyssey_, Book XII
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mummy

"I see Egypt and the Egyptians -- I see the pyramids and obelisks;
 I look on chisel'd histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs
     of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks;
 I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm'd, swathed
     in linen cloth, lying there many centuries;
 I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping
     neck, the hands folded across the breast."
    -Walt Whitman, "Salut au Monde"
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phantom

"Who wondrous things concerning our welfare, And straunge phantomes doth lett us ofte foresee."
    -Spenser, _The Faerie Queene_ II. xii. 47
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player ghost

"Know thyself."
        -Inscription in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi
%%%%
Prince Ribbit

"Princess! youngest princess!
 Open the door for me!
 Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me

 Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain?
 Princess, youngest princess!
 Open the door for me!"
    -Brothers Grimm (Margaret Hunt), _The Frog King, or Iron Henry_
%%%%
program bug

"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
    -Gerald Weinberg, Weinberg's Second Law
%%%%
rakshasa

"He is brilliant, yet utterly corrupt. Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he both shines and stinks."
    -John Randolph
%%%%
shadow

"Between the idea
 And the reality
 Between the motion
 And the act
 Falls the Shadow
     For thine is the Kingdom

 Between the conception
 And the creation
 Between the emotion
 And the response
 Falls the Shadow
     Life is very long"
    -T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
%%%%
small skeleton

"When you hear sweet syncopation
 And the music softly moans
 T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
 And dance around in your bones.

 When it gets too hot for comfort
 And you can’t get ice cream cones
 T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
 And dance around in your bones."
    -William S. Burroughs and Tom Waits, "T'ain't no sin"
%%%%
worm

"While the angels, all pallid and wan,
   Uprising, unveiling, affirm
 That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm."
    -Edgar Allan Poe
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