106 quotes
How nicely you put it! We may rant against fortune and the world, but we are left at the end with the stark proposition: “These are the things which are.”
Dimension of Miracles (1968)
Linguistic accommodation as well. Are they speaking my language or am I speaking theirs? I can never know: the transaction cannot watch itself being transacted.
The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)
The new city of Esmeralda was not the usual steel-and-glass rabbit warren that the modern world had developed in its long struggle to free itself from any hint of good taste.
Victim Prime (1987)
One does not fall in love by exercise of reason and good taste; one simply falls, and invents ingenious reasons afterwards. One falls in love with one’s fatality, whether it be a woman or a city.
The Game of X (1965)
Why, after all, did I have to live with reality? Wasn’t illusion a perfectly suitable condition?
The Game of X (1965)
He exaggerated somewhat. In fact, not one word did he say that was true.
The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)
All his studies had been for extraterrestrial exploration. There was no place for him on Earth; and now he was barred from space.
The Status Civilization (1960)
Our roles are chose for us in this world by the stern dictates of an unrelenting Fate; and many a man who thought to play the emperor on Life’s stage found himself cast for a corpse instead.
Mindswap (1966)
Marvin did not give way to despair. He gave way instead to anger, which was a much healthier emotion, though equally unproductive.
Mindswap (1966)
We denizens of Earth have a common vice: We take what we’re offered, whether we need it or not.
You can get into a lot of trouble that way.
Pilgrimage to Earth (1957)
I know you’re sane and you know you’re sane. But what if we’re both wrong?
Mr. Rath’s iron face registered a rather corrugated disgust. People were useless as witnesses. Worse than useless, since they were frequently misleading. For reliability, give him a robot every time.
Pilgrimage to Earth (1957)
Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull’s lordly selection of death has seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter.
Immortality, Inc (1959)
You have been bitten by the travel bug, which is very suitable for your time of life, and is a passion akin to falling in love, or fighting an idealistic war, or becoming disillusioned with the world, and other postures of the young.
Mindswap (1966)
The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man’s patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure, the greatest deed of his life. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.
Immortality, Inc (1959)
And a great longing overcame him, a desire to be finished with desire, to forego pleasure and pain, to quit the petty modes of achievement and failure, to have done with distractions, and get on with the business of life, which was death.
Mindswap (1966)
Rome has an ambiance, puerile yet unmatchable. Rome hints at the possibility of becoming the main actor in the drama of one’s own life. (The hint is false, of course; but the stolid northern cities do not even possess the hint.)
The 10th Victim (1965)
For Polletti, experience had brought only the bitter residue of pleasure which is the true essence of disenchantment. Certain delights which in his youth had seemed unique and unobtainable had turned out, upon acquisition, to be infinitely and drearily repeatable.
The 10th Victim (1965)
His friends, who had been waiting for the death announcement, came to congratulate him. They were eager to hear the complete details of the Trial by Ordeal; but Barrent had learned now that secret knowledge was the road to power. He gave them only the sketchiest outline.
The Status Civilization (1960)
Mishkin saw a tape recorder on stilts. He went over and turned it on. The recorder said: “This is a recorded message to remind you not to forget to record a message to remind you not to forget.”
Options (1975)