27 quotes
Good soldiers stay alive by being unsentimental and having a quick eye for the main chance.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
The great in Evil, and the great in [Goodness|Good]]—both leave an immortal residue.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
While it is foolish to deny the dark around us, it is futile to exaggerate it.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
At that age you invent extravagant compensations for bruises to your dignity.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
The essence of nightmare lies less in the simple experience of horrors than in the unpreventable fruition of horrors foreknown.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Ambitious dabblers in sorcery add much to the hell that is on earth.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
And I make bold to say that I am not the only one of my countrymen who could profit from taking this admonition to heart.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
It’s always been an exceedingly curious thing to me, just how incurious most people are about all save their own little island of time and place in the world.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Can it be your spirit does not thrive? Can it be you’ve weighed your life of kissing arse and crouching before fat purses, and have found it wanting?
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Now a true ocean is the sky’s open floor—that’s the feeling men love in it, the reason they venture upon it, apart from gain or exploration.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Deeper and deeper. Ever greater power. Ever greater evil.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
“He’s here, of course, strictly through his own ambitious carelessness.”
“Prime flaws of youth, of course—but also its strengths, this carelessness and ambition.”
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Weigh then your wealth, and judge if it’s more dear
To you than life. If not, your course is clear.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
It was more than sad, the eternal unteachability of youth.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
Dalissem chuckled. It felt like being grinned at by a big mountain cat—delightful for the beauty of the animal, disturbing for the possible sequel.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
The assumption that we would ever be called upon to perform this second task now appeared quite clearly to me as the most extravagant folly, based on a wild delusion conceived by a raving idiot.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
And most important, nothing was to be taken for granted in that place. In Death’s world, any covenant, no matter how mighty, can fall null—any spell, however cogent, can be abrogated. The only certain law in that place is Death itself.
Nifft the Lean (1982)
We’re none of us more than wisps of desire and imagining! What man is not, at the center of his mind, a ghostly wish-to-be haunting the jerry-built habitation of his imperfect acts? Haunting the maze of what-has-been?
Nifft the Lean (1982)
And you could see at a glance that Defalk was a simple man who wanted no more than to be brilliantly rich, admired, and unencumbered with work. His face said it so plainly: “I’m an excellent fellow. Isn’t such a life no more than my proper portion?”
Nifft the Lean (1982)