Gene Wolfe Quotes
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No man has a home unless he is master of a place where he must please no one-a place where he can go and lock the door behind him.
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The best way to be thought honest is to be honest.
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You have need of learning, children, in order that the whorl will someday have need of you.
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A trooper fights for honor ... or from loyalty. Or for loot sometimes. But he waits for pay. He will not wait without it, because when there is no fighting there is no honor to win, no flag to die for, no loot to gain.
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We never really got married. When we both wanted to we never had the money, somehow. And when we had the money, there was always some kind of quarrel. After a couple of years everybody thought we were married anyway.
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Nobody bothers crazy people. ... In the end, maybe it's the crazy people who win after all.
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An exaggerated and solemn respect always indicates a loss of faith.
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If you rob someone who would help you if you needed help you only rob yourself. ... Do you imagine you can be cruel without teaching others to be cruel to you?
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People who fear death live no longer than those who don't, and live scared.
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I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves.
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In the marketplace he told of honor, and how it is a higher law than any law. At the crossroads he talked of freedom, the freedom of the wind and clouds, and freedom that loves all things and is without guilt. Beside the city gates he told stories of the forgotten cities that were and of the forgotten cities that might be, if only men would forget them.
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What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget.
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'You’re a poet too, aren’t you? And a good liar, I bet.''I was the Autarch of Urth; that required a little lying, if you like. We called it diplomacy.'
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He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die.
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As you intend to live hereafter, it is in your power to live here.
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I have never in my whole life had a fight with a smart person or even seen anybody else have one either. That is because when the fight starts the smart people are not there anymore. They have gone off someplace else, and when it is over they come back and tell you how much they did in the fight, only it is all lies.
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'Prince of parable, I desire to see those gardens of lasting delight which Allah-the Creator! the Ever Beneficent!-reserves for the faithful. How am I to do so if I tell lies?' 'By lying to Allah, I suppose.'
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Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.
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People who wish to be lost always get their way.
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He is not mad. He is only more clever than you. It is not the same.
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Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan.
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Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.
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Action, you see, is the end that thought achieves. Action is its only purpose. What else is it good for? If we don't act, it's worthless.
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The most trivial skirmish is not trivial to those who die in it, and so should not be trivial in any ultimate sense to us.