82 quotes
Experience is a wonderful teacher, but one whose lessons come too late.
The Book of the Short Sun (1999)
Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.
The Book of the Short Sun (1999)
An exaggerated and solemn respect always indicates a loss of faith.
As you intend to live hereafter, it is in your power to live here.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
People who fear death live no longer than those who don't, and live scared.
The Wizard Knight (2004)
There is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.
He is indeed a creature of evil; but so are you, and so am I.
The Book of the New Sun (1980)
Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
People who wish to be lost always get their way.
The only actors who can really do justice to their parts are the ones who don't know what they are.
People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen.
You have need of learning, children, in order that the whorl will someday have need of you.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
Be careful about extending credit, too, and doubly careful about refusing to extend it.
The Book of the Short Sun (1999)
“That the environment should respond to human thought. That is the core of magic and the oldest dream of mankind.”
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.
The Book of the New Sun (1980)
There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak.
Home Fires (2011)
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing—but what grace!
It is well not to spend one's symbols improvidently.
The Book of the Short Sun (1999)