39 quotes
Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
Dying Earth (1950)
The purportedly free was seldom as represented.
Dying Earth (1950)
It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself.
Dying Earth (1950)
Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.
Dying Earth (1950)
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.
Dying Earth (1950)
I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.
Dying Earth (1950)
"I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?"
Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel."
Dying Earth (1950)
“You must save yourselves,” Rogol Domedonfors told them. “You have ignored the ancient wisdom, you have been too indolent to learn, you have sought easy complacence from religion, rather than facing manfully to the world.”
Dying Earth (1950)
"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."
Dying Earth (1950)
"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."
Dying Earth (1950)
"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."
Dying Earth (1950)
It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.
Dying Earth (1950)
"The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)
Dying Earth (1950)
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?
Dying Earth (1950)
Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.
Dying Earth (1950)
“Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”
“Decidedly so, if the villain, for the purposes of his joke, thinks to simulate the altruist.”
“Then how will you know villain from altruist?”
Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.”
Dying Earth (1950)
Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!
Dying Earth (1950)
“I am more inclined to punish Hurtiancz for his crassness,” said Ildefonse. “But now he simulates a swinish stupidity to escape my anger.”“Absolute falsity!” roared Hurtiancz. “I simulate nothing!”Ildefonse shrugged. “For all his deficiencies as polemicist and magician, Hurtiancz at least is candid.”
Dying Earth (1950)
"I therefore suggest that in the style of the previous examples, a natural scientist, examining a single atom might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!"
"Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense."
Dying Earth (1950)