Poul Anderson Quotes
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'If anything does change man,' he said, 'it’s science and technology. Just think about the fact-while it lasts-that parents need not take for granted some of their babies will die. You get a completely different concept of what a child is.'
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The old man murmured: 'Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.'
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What I want is to commune with the land. In company I couldn’t admit that. It’d sound too pompous, as though I were from Greenpeace or the People’s Republic of Berkeley.
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'Are you that afraid to die?''No. I simply like to live.'
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Heim ignored the mob scene on the 3V, rested his eyes on the cold serenity of the Milky Way and thought that this, at least, would endure.
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The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. 'Beyond one or two hundred years back,' Havig once said to me, 'the daytime sky is always full of wings.'
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Another irritating thing about Naqsans was their habit of solemnly repeating the obvious. In that respect they were almost as bad as humans.
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Sincerity is the most overrated virtue in the catalogue.
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Know that against time the gods themselves are powerless.
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'You have to have some kind of morality,' he said.'Sure. Like you have to have motives for doing anything at all. Still, I think we’re beyond that smug sort of code which proclaimed crusades and burned heretics and threw dissenters into concentration camps. We need more personal and less public honor.'
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'I really liked that girl.''Not loved, evidently,' I observed.'N-n-no. I supposed not. Though what is love, anyway? Doesn’t it have so infinitely many kinds and degrees and mutations and quantum jumps that- Never mind.'
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A little careful pushing, and they’ll bury the hatchet all right-in each other.
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Here was more than a question of law; it was a matter of whose will should prevail.
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Life was too short for anything but amusement at the human race.
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I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.
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Men, whose span is cruelly short, rush nonetheless to death in their youth as to a maiden’s arms.
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We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?
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Winter lay among the Outer Hebrides. Day was a sullen glimmer between two darknesses, often smothered in snow. When it did not fling itself upon the rocks and burst in freezing spume, the North Atlantic rolled in heavy and gnawing. There was no real horizon; leaden waves met leaden sky and misty leaden light hid the seam.
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For a space he faltered, when Goltan fell with a spear through him. 'Now I am one friend poorer,' he said, 'and that is a wealth not gained back.'
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Over unforced love, the gods themselves had no might.