Jack Vance Quotes
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The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.
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'Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,' he declared. 'We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.'
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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.'
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He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.
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Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.
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Your thoughts move with the deft precision of worm-tracks in the mud.
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A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it’s lessening the tension.
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Sir, your ideas are incorrect in every possible respect.
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The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.
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Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
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His brain ached with the want of knowing.
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Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat.
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I give dignity second place to expedience.
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'The contingency is remote.' (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)
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I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man’s accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.
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You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.
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My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.
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If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.
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Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.
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Who is seducing whom? If we are working to the same ends, there is no need for so many cross-purposes.
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Music is like a language: you cannot understand it unless you learn it, or more accurately, are born into it.
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'I would define ‘avarice’ as a consequence of the human estate: a condition arising from turbulence and inequality. In none of the paradises, where conditions are no doubt optimum, does ‘avarice’ exert force. Here, we are men struggling toward perfection and ‘avarice’ is a station along the way.'
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How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real...
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'Are you yourself a Christian?'The young man made a negative sign. 'The concepts of religion baffle me.''This inscrutability is perhaps not unintentional,' said the ex-priest. 'It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.'