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How many cards have real world quotes?

Mylian

Eloquent Lunatic

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Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:10 pm

I've always gotten a kick out of real world quotes on cards. Coleridge on the Scathe Zombies. Shakespeare on the Moon Sprite. Poe on the Frozen Shade. Is there a list somewhere of all the cards that have real world quotes like these?

Quick search of Gatherer:
(note: many of these are only on certain editions of the card, so if you're searching Gatherer, look at all versions of the card)

Edgar Allen Poe is on:
Death Pits of Rath
Frozen Shade
Marsh Viper
Phantom Monster
Urborg

Shakespeare is on:
Boomerang
Castle
Dark Banishing (Two different quotes)
Darkness
Early Harvest
Firestorm Phoenix
Gaseous Form
Giant Strength
Naturalize
Redeem
Shimian Night Stalker
Squall
Winter Blast
Wolverine Pack

Samuel Coleridge:
Hypnotic Specter
Plague Rats
Sacred Nectar
Scathe Zombies
Wall of Ice
Will-o'-the-Wisp

Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Dakmor Ghoul
Firebreathing
Rust
Squall

Sir Walter Raleigh:
Sacred Nectar

Edmund Spencer:
Boomerang

(So, counting each quote as a separate instance, that's... 32? Are there any I've missed?)

More, I'm counting anything that looks like a "real name", I'll look up the ones I don't recognise later to make sure they're not fictional quotes:

Abyssal Specter - Stephen Crane
Aladdin's Ring - The Arabian Nights, Junior Classics trans.
Ali Baba - The Arabian Nights, Junior Classics trans.
Ambition's Cost - Cao Cao, quoting Confucius
Ancestral Memories - Lewis Carroll
Archivist - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones
Archivist - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bird Maiden - The Arabian Nights, trans. Haddawy
Cosmic Horror - Alexander Pope
Dragon Whelp - Marianne Moore
Durkwood Boars - The Bible, Mark 5:13
Fissure - Plato
Greed - Tao Tê Ching 46
Pearled Unicorn - Lewis Carroll
Piety - The Qur'an, 24:52
Pyrotechnics - Navajo war chant
Repentant Blacksmith - The Arabian Nights, trans. Haddawy
Segovian Leviathan - The Bible, Job 41:1
The Brute - Samuel Butler
Vampire Bats - Theodore Roethke
Visions - Thomas Gray
Wall of Brambles - Conrad Aiken

And I know there's a whole slew of Bible quotes but I'm not sure what to use to search them out... I'm scouring all the cards, set by set. This is turning out to be a bit more epic than I planned, but I've got to finish now that I've begun. pirate

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:48 pm

Here's another bunch, bringing the total so far to either 71 or 68, depending on whether you count the uncredited Ragnarok and Cao Cao references:

Energy Flux - Heraclitus
Force Spike - William Butler Yeats
Funeral March - John Keats
Hurricane - Virgil, Aeneid
Ivory Guardians - Juvenal, Satires
Lifetap - Chinese Proverb
Righteousness - Homer, Iliad
Shrink - Anglo-Saxon curse
Soul Barrier - Emily Dickinson
The Wretched - Persian proverb
Updraft - Sir Walter Scott
Wind Drake - William Blake
Wall of Bone - Reference to Ragnarok of Germanic myth?
Wind Spirit - Christina Rossetti
Winds of Change - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Coercion - Reference to Cao Cao?
Relentless Assault - Reference to Cao Cao?

Okay, last batch for now, I'm tired of looking. xd Based on the further references I've found, I'm definitely counting the Cao Cao stuff:
Catalog - Chinese proverb
Confiscate - Mark Twain
Defense Grid - Crystal Eastman
Distorting Lens - William Blake
Fear - Joseph Conrad
Fertile Ground - Mary Webb
Fleeting Image - Aesop, Fables, trans. Jacobs
Giant Octopus - Jules Verne
Holy Day - Henry Vaughan
Jayemdae Tome - Sir Francis Bacon
Larceny - Roman proverb
Lightning Elemental - William Knox
Maggot Carrier - Seneca, Epistles
Peach Garden Oath - Oath of the Peach Garden
Persecute - John Dryden
Phantom Warrior - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Solidarity - Benjamin Franklin
Swarm of Rats - Bram Stoker
Treasure Trove - Emma Goldman
Vengeance - Reference to Liu Bei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Bei
Wrath of Marit Lage (Ice Age) - Paraphrased Lovecraft reference?

So that's a total of 92, or 90, depending on whether you count the Ragnarok reference and the possible Lovecraft nod. (Come ON, Dread Marit Lage lies dreaming, not dead? How obvious can you get? xd )

Here's some more, and I'm done with worrying about the totals, count 'em if you want. xd By the way, why didn't anyone tell me that Portal Three Kingdoms was pure Awesome Sauce? :

Army of Allah - Arab proverb
Barbarian General - Confucius
Burning Fields - Sun Tzu
Devouring Deep - Shakespeare
Dream Coat - Theognis, Elegies
Emerald Dragonfly - "Dragonfly Haiku," poet unkown
False Defeat - Sun Tzu
Forest Bear - Chinese idiom
Giant Turtle - Ogden Nash
Glyph of Doom - William Faulkner
Grave Robbers - Proverb
Grim Tutor - Greek proverb
Hammerheim - Thomas Campbell
Headless Horseman - Washington Irving
Hellfire - John Milton
Hornet Cobra - Rudyard Kipling
Horror of Horrors - Adam Lindsay Gordon
Hyperion Blacksmith - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Karakas - Emily Dickinson
King Suleiman - The Qur'an, 21:81
Knight Errant - The Bible, Proverbs 15:33
Part Water - The Bible, Exodus, 14:22
Pendelhaven - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ravages of War - Lao Tzu
Revelation - The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:19
Royal Trooper - Sophocles, Phaedra
Sage's Knowledge - Lao Tzu
Shapeshifter - Jonathan Swift
Slashing Tiger - Sun Tzu
Squire - Geoffrey Chaucer
Syphon Soul - Christopher Marlowe
The Abyss - Ernest Renan
Three Visits - Mencius
Thunder Spirit - Richard Adams
Tidings - Shakespeare
Tolaria - John Dryden
Touch of Darkness - Thomas Middleton
Transmutation - Randall Jarrell
Veteran Cavalier - Arabian proverb
War Elephant - Kikuyu proverb
Warrior's Oath - Warrior's oath common during the Three Kingdoms period
Water Elemental - Chinese proverb
Wei Scout - Sun Tzu
Young Wei Recruits - Confucius