Jack Vance Quotes
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Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.
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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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You are a particularly clever girl: almost as clever as you are appealing to the eye.
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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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He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.
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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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'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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'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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I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.
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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?
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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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Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
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I have seen all I care to see and heard rather more.
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The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.
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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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'If ambush I must, then ambush I will,' Aillas muttered to himself. 'A fig for chivalry, at least until the war is won.'
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Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
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'The crime,' said the Jacynth softly, 'is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.'
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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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Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
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'My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.'
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His brain ached with the want of knowing.
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'We are supposed to set you a good example,' said Devonet. 'As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree.''Then I am a lady of refinement well and truly,' said Madouc, 'since I did not wish to be found.'