Jack Vance Quotes
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A single question remained, the age-old cry of anguish: 'How could one so beautiful be so base?'
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'Sir Tristano spoke: 'Stop! You are taking the great green pearl!''Naturally!' said the voice from a point close behind. 'That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim’s valuables!'
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Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.
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Ildefonse said ponderously: 'If your analysis is correct, we must undertake to secure the future against this pangynic nightmare.'
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Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!
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'I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?''Absolutely, and in all respects!' declared Cugel. 'Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.'
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Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?
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'At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt,' stated the Nolde. 'We are not the fools that certain untidy ruffians might suppose.'
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You are a particularly clever girl: almost as clever as you are appealing to the eye.
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We’ll rack our brains and either solve your problem or come up come up with new and better ones.
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The life we’ve been leading couldn’t last forever. It’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did.
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If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind.
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Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.
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The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.
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I suppose if you isolate yourself to such an extent, you more or less must expect a series of emergencies.
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They call me a renegade.The epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!
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I fear, Master Zamp, that you are a victim to your own perfervid imagination.
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Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
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Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
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'The crime,' said the Jacynth softly, 'is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.'
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He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.
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I have seen all I care to see and heard rather more.
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The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?
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Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.