8 quotes
Urban folk, dealing as they do in ideas and abstractions, become conditioned to unreality. Then, wherever the fabric of civilization breaks, these people are as helpless as fish out of water.
The Gray Prince (1975)
Often their grievances were real; often they complained from sheer petulance.
The Gray Prince (1975)
The travesty exists only because reliance upon abstraction has made reality incomprehensible to you.
The Gray Prince (1975)
“And this is Uther Madduc’s ‘wonderful joke’?”
“So I believe.”
“But what’s funny?”
“The magnificent ability of the human race to delude itself.”
The Gray Prince (1975)
“Perhaps you can advise us on the lottery,” suggested Schaine.
“Gladly,” said Elvo Glissam. “Invest your money elsewhere.”
The Gray Prince (1975)
Elvo Glissam only knew for certain that he found Schaine as beautiful some magnificent natural process, like a sunrise, or a surge of breaking surf, or stars in the midnight sky.
The Gray Prince (1975)
“You used the word ‘civilization,’ which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.”
The Gray Prince (1975)
“Except for a few special cases, title to every parcel of real property derives from an act of violence, more or less remote, and ownership is only as valid as the strength and will required to maintain it. That is the lesson of history, whether you like it or not.”
“The mourning of defeated peoples, while pathetic and tragic, is usually futile,” said Kelse.
The Gray Prince (1975)