Philip José Farmer

“Can imagination actFolds and drops away from sight?”

“Miles above the Earth we know,Waiting for the rocket's light.”

“Sawbeaked epitome of bodilessFrom the act of beauty, beauty of the act.”

“Beauty in this Iron Age must turnOf selfishness and lust have stained our days...”

“Reader, pray that soon this Iron AgeWill crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.”

“Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,The tender alcoves built by love at night.”

“Oh, I'd reach beyond the comma of youEnd...”

“We too. No wisdom to utter.Through so much chatter and stutter.”

“Let those who think the soul is shallow rail,In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail.”

“Drowned idols swirl like seeds in chaos' wine.And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes.”

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

“Though Melville omitted it, Captain Ahab said, "In one sense, Aleister Crowley is lower than whale shit. In another, he's as high as God's hat. The true shaman knows that God's hat is made out of dried whale shit."”

“One thing is sure, O comrades, that the loveThat burns our roots and leaves us free for Space.”

“The way is open, comrades, free as SpaceThat nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.”

“Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the lightHas cleared our eyes and given a hint of Power.”

“Now we have lit a candle to the powerItself...”

“Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.Above will be below when man has Love.”

“God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earthTo hold all love within our breast's small space.”

“Zeitgeist rides tonight, and the devil take the hindmost!”

“Yesterday's monomaniac is tomorrow's messiah…”

“Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive.”

“His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him. He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"”

“It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife. Of all the millions, he alone was awake.”

“In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.”

“The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights.”

“All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.”

““I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!”“I don’t remember offering you any money.””

“Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts.”

“Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.”

“Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.””

“Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.”

“Dreams haunted The Riverworld.”

“Suddenly he was weeping. The tears were for the good things that had been or might have been, for the bad things that had been but should not have been.”

“Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.”

“"Call me Meier," Goring said, but he did not pause to explain the joke.”

“By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic.”

“The visitor said that his kind called themselves the Ethicals, though they had other names for themselves. They were on a higher plane of ethical development than most Earthlings. Notice that he said most. This indicates that there have been some of us who have achieved the same level as the Ethicals.”

“This is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all. It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two essences. One is matter, the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.”

“It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.”