Otacon: Okay... There's a saying that goes "Even a bird on high dies a glutton's death, as do the fish of the deeps." The lesson is — er, don't be greedy. The fish that belonged to a family called the Deeps died from overfeeding, and so did a bird that got high on something — probably fermented fruit.
Snake: ...okay. If you say so.
Otacon: I do, Snake. Don't take unnecessary risks just because you're greedy for more Items. Remember the Deep family's fish.

Otacon: Do you know the saying "Those who walk a hundred leagues think not that their journey is half ended until the ninetieth league?" That means... what does it mean? Okay, it means that if you're planning to walk that far, you'd better damn well know how to do simple arithmetic. Study! Stay in school!
Snake: This seems to be getting more and more random.
Otacon: Correction: It's becoming more deep. Trust me!

The Sphinx: If you do not learn to master your rage-
Mr. Furious: Your rage will become your master?
The Sphinx: ....
Mr. Furious: That's what you were gonna say, right?
The Sphinx: ... Not necessarily...

time / and beauty / are orthogonal
to learn / is to die having learned
an object sought / finds the seeker / before they look

We eat chickens. We take a bird and we put it in our bodies. In our stomach it dissolves down into atoms and then those atoms enter our bodies. We do this every day all over the planet. Now, think about this: WE are the chickens.

Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.

Parker: A man with one watch knows the time. A man with two is never sure.
Sophie: Hnh?
Parker: I had fortune cookies for breakfast.

You talk in circles, Cernd, but that's okay. Boo runs in them.

'Now here they throw more pretentious crap on the screen. How 'bout givin' me some pretentious patterns instead? This ain't good enough.

You speak entirely in parables, don't you? You're like a crap Jesus.

The nude man catcheth the hen while the clothed man shivers.

"In unifying your chi with that of your opponent—in aligning the breath of your life and theirs—you will storm the strongest fortress. There! Is that a good Secret?"

"I have no idea. It sounds as if it might be really profound. It also sounds like baloney. It is, therefore, the highest-quality bullshido, or martial arts hogwash. I don't know whether to commit it to memory and study it or consider it an object lesson in the ease with which you can counterfeit ancient proverbs."

In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

Wait, what did [Yoda] just say? Maybe he isn’t that wise, because that don’t make a lick of sense. "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." Can’t anger lead to fear, fear lead to suffering, and then suffering lead to hate? See, when you have three totally interchangeable emotional states, they can’t really be arranged in a certain pattern of logic.

Let me share some real wisdom with you: chicken leads to egg, egg leads to omelet, omelet leads to fecal urgency.

What would Uncle do? "Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self reveal itself."

Haikus are easy
But sometime they don't make sense
Refrigerator

"Darkness is light's light of darkness as a dark farewell to dark lightness."