Jack Vance Quotes
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The purportedly free was seldom as represented.
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I'm only giving orders because I'm more efficient and smarter than you are.
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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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He’s like an imbecile with a pepper shaker; a little makes his food taste good, therefore a lot will make it wonderful.
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I give dignity second place to expedience.
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Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
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Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
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He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.
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Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.
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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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You are a particularly clever girl: almost as clever as you are appealing to the eye.
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'Enter, my friend, enter. How goes your trade?''In all candor, not too well,' said Cugel. 'I am both perplexed and disappointed, for my talismans are not obviously useless.'
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Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
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'Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.' <br.> 'Not in every aspect,' said Cugel.
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I have seen all I care to see and heard rather more.
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King Aillas talks softly and with great politeness; he has the uncomfortable skill of calling one a false-hearted blackguard, a liar, a cheat and a villain, but making it seem a fulsome compliment.
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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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I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.
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'When one deals with the Murthe, the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, and Zanzel's repute carries no more weight than last year's mouse-dropping - if that much.'
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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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The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.
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'My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.'
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I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
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And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?