13 quotes
Did you not tell me once that patronage of the artist was the only valuable vocation to which a prince might aspire?
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
You desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
“Human love,” says Fallogard Phatt, turning his eyes from his vision, “it is finally our only real weapon against entropy...”
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
For this was the other thing that Elric knew; that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
“Be silent!” That is the perpetual admonition of Tyranny. Tyranny bellows ‘Be silent!’ even to the screams of its victims, the pathetic moans and groanings and supplications of its trampled millions.”
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
The man is a relic, gentlemen, from an age most of us have only read about. He would have us judged by our wealth and our martial glory rather than our goodwill and tranquility of spirit.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
Their glory in earthly power had brought them to decadent ruin, as it brought down all empires who gloried in gold or conquest or those other ambitions which can never be satisfied but must forever be fed.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
There are subjects forbidden by good manners, it seems. As in many societies, I suppose, where the very fundamentals of their existence are the subject of the deepest taboos. What is this terror of reality, I wonder, which plagues the human spirit?
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
I must admit, sir, that I have modified the verses a little, to allow for the new things I have learned, so I am an unreliable source of truth, sir, save in its most fundamental sense. Like a majority of poets, sir.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
I am for no master nor moral persuasion. I am for myself. What your yearning soul, madam, might mistake for loyalty to person or Purpose is merely a firm and, aye, principled determination to accept responsibility only for myself and my own actions.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
Elric was recollecting what was best and noblest in his own people and in himself, and even as he celebrated this he mourned the self-obsessed creatures they had become, using their power merely to preserve their power and that, he supposed, was true decay...
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
“As I believe I observed earlier,” said the albino prince to the still-cowed Gaynor, “the most powerful of beings are not necessarily the most intelligent, nor, indeed, sane, nor well-mannered. The more one knows of the gods, the more one learns this fundamental lesson...”
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
“In my own world, sir, sad to say, human prejudice is matched only by human folly. Not a soul claims to be prejudiced, of course, as there are few who would describe themselves as fools...”
Elric, chewing on a piece of barely palatable salt beef, remarked that this seemed a quality of a good deal of society, throughout the multiverse.
The Revenge of the Rose (1991)