Jack Vance

“Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.”

“The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?”

“Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!”

“There can be no doubt as to the facts as I have stated them. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.”

“"Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.""Not in every aspect," said Cugel.”

“Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.”

“The purportedly free was seldom as represented.”

“All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three.”

“He indicated the pair of grotesques. "For instance, I have seldom seen objects so studiously repulsive as this pair of bibelots. Skillfully done, agreed! Notice the detail in these horrid little ears! The snouts, the fangs: the malignance is almost real! Still, they are undeniably the work of a diseased imagination." The objects reared erect. One of them spoke in a rasping voice: "No doubt Cugel has good reason for his unkind words; still, neither Gark nor I can take them lightly."”

“I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.”

“I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?" Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel.”

“It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.”

““Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.””

““I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?”“Absolutely, and in all respects!” declared Cugel. “Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.””

““I think that I will not answer that question,” he said at last. “I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.”“Half as many,” Clissum pointed out delicately.”

“At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt," stated the Nolde. "We are not the fools that certain untidy ruffians might suppose.”

“An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.”

“It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.”

“I give dignity second place to expedience.”

“When one deals with the Murthe, the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, and Zanzel's repute carries no more weight than last year's mouse-dropping - if that much.”

“Ildefonse said ponderously: "If your analysis is correct, we must undertake to secure the future against this pangynic nightmare."”

“Llorio, you are a woman of surpassing beauty, though you would seem to lack that provocative warmth which draws man to woman, and adds dimension to the character."The Murthe responded curtly: "The quality you describe is a kind of lewd obsequiousness which, happily, has now become obsolete. As for the 'surpassing beauty,' it is an apotheotic quality generated by the surging music of the female soul, which you, in your crassness, perceive only as a set of pleasing contours.”

“We need no chieftain; such folk eat more than their share.”

“Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party—whether he realizes it or not—must always come out the worse.”

“I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.”

“A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!"Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense.”

“Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.”

“Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of the nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.”

“You espouse a very popular doctrine, ethical pragmatism, which always turns out to be the doctrine of self-interest.”

“You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful?”

“What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.”

“Revenge is not an ignoble motive, when it works to a productive end.”

““Everyone is the same,” he told himself. “Anxious to arrive and, when they leave, wondering why they came.””

“There are also those who, like the author, ensconce themselves on a thunderous crag of omniscience, and with protestations of humility which are either unconvincing or totally absent, assume the obligation of appraisal, commendation, derogation or denunciation of their contemporaries. Still, by and large it is an easier job than digging a ditch.”

“Conjecture without facts was useless; he must deal with events as they occurred.”

“Deeming the unsubstantiated dogma of a localized religious cult to be an undignified and unsuitable base on which to erect the chronology of galactic man, the members of this convention hereby declare that time shall now be reckoned from the year 2000 A.D. (Old System), which becomes the year 0. The revolution of Earth about Sol remains the standard annual unit.”

“Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to those basic enemies.”

“The tighter the discipline of an art form, the more subjective the criteria of taste.”

“Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.”

““Beauty comes in often to drink. A spaceman, he claims himself, but as to this I can’t be certain. I have often declared myself a great lover. All of us lie, as much or more than necessary. ‘What is truth?’ asks Pons Pilatus, in the fable, and I answer: ‘A commodity as cheap as air which we hide as if it were as precious as yewl stone.’””

“Destiny could not bring him this far only to deal him failure!”

“A detached attitude toward the problems of others is not illegal.”

““And thereby hangs a tale,” as the monkey said while describing the cat’s rear-quarters.”

“Money lost, little lost.Pluck lost, all lost.”

“The central problem, so it seemed, was to learn from whose eye he looked forth. Much, after all, would depend upon his viewpoint.”

““Don’t you think it’s a bit—well, intense? Are people really interested in these matters?”“Easily said, but it’s no way to run a magazine. People don’t want to really understand anything; they want to think they have learned without the necessity of application.””

“A man without friends is a tree without leaves.”

“I have much to say about the world, but every year the compulsion dwindles. Let them live and die; it is all one to me.”

“There is too much knowledge already in the world; we use facts as crutches, to the impoverishment of our senses. Facts are falsehoods; logic is deceit. I know a single system of communication: the declaiming of poetry.”

“I am an unhappy man. I am haunted by my inability to express the inexpressible, to come to terms with the unknown. The pursuit of beauty is, of course, a major psychological drive. It its various guises—which is to say, the urge to perfection, the yearning to merge with the eternal, the explorer’s restlessness, the realization of an Absolute created by ourselves, yet larger than our totality—it is perhaps the most important human thrust.”

“Art implies discipline; the more excellent the art, the more rigorous the discipline.”

“Candor is never indiscreet. Truth, which is to say, the reflection of life, is beautiful.”

“What good is notoriety if your friends are unable to profit from it?”

“My great pleasure is creation—of this I never tire. Some of my guests have complained of a gentle melancholy which hangs in the air; I agree that the mood exists. The explanation, I believe, arises from the fugacity of beauty, the tragic pavanne to which all of us step.”

““Be on your way; this is holy soil.”“How can you be so sure? It looks like ordinary dirt.””

“The symbologist made a cryptic sign. “That remains to be seen, as the cat said who voided into the sugar bowl.””

“I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.”

“If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.”

“Remember, not all lawyers are fools!”

“I am a legalist and a financial expert, I admit as much; but my disregard for the law goes no further.”

“For many years my nerves were like electric wires. Then I discovered the first axiom of human accord: I accept each person on his own terms. I keep a close tongue in my head; I offer opinions only when so solicited. What a remarkable change! Dissension vanishes, novel facts emerge, digestion flows like a wide river.”

““What are you doing here?”“I’m looking at you, and grateful for the opportunity.””

“The seconds marched past, traversing that mysterious boundary which separates future from past.”

““May I inquire as to your motives?”“Why do you trouble to ask? You would believe nothing told you.””

“My own concepts in this regard are easy and clear, and I am sure that the word “simplistic” will be used by my critics. These folk are callow and turgid of intellect; I am reassured by their howls and yelps.”

“My wealth is my shelf of books!”

“Urbanized men and women experience not life but the abstraction of life, on ever higher levels of refinement and dislocation from reality. They become processors of ideas, and have evolved such esoteric occupations as the critic, the critic who criticizes criticism, and even the critic who criticizes criticism of criticism. It is a very sad misuse of human talent and energy.”

““You were notified in regard to a recent conclave of the Dexad at Wild Isle?”“Yes. I chose not to attend. In discussions I find myself consistently a minority of one, and my presence seems unnecessary.””

““As always there is someone to hold a tight hand on the purse strings—usually the most affluent of the persons in authority.”“This is how they become affluent.””

“Discipline in itself is not a corrupt concept, only discipline that is imposed rather than self-calculated.”

“It does no good to hurry here. In fact, it may even be against the law.”

““Intelligence” demands the most strict of definitions, since the word is easily and often abused. Intelligence rates the quality of Gaean man’s competence at altering environment to suit his convenience, or, more generally, the solution of problems. The corollaries to the idea are several. Among them: In the absence of problems, intelligence cannot be measured. A creature with a large, complicated brain is not necessarily intelligent. Raw abstract intelligence is a meaningless concept.”

“Alice put her hands on his shoulder. “And now, what of you?”“Quite well. Deflated, perhaps. I have been deserted by my enemies. Treesong is dead. The affair is over. I am done.””

“Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.”

“Aillas groaned. “Destiny could never be so unkind.”Suldrun said in a soft voice: “Destiny doesn’t really care.””

“Kings, like children, tend to be opportunistic. Generosity only spoils them. They equate affability with weakness and hasten to exploit it.”

“Who is seducing whom? If we are working to the same ends, there is no need for so many cross-purposes.”

“What a strange and unfamiliar world if everyone were treated according to his deserts!”

“The colour, noise and festivity failed to elevate Carfilhiot’s mood; in fact—so he told himself—never had he witnessed so much pointless nonsense.”

“Die then. This is my cure for sore knees.”

““Are you yourself a Christian?”“This inscrutability is perhaps not unintentional,” said the ex-priest. “It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.””

“A notable scheme has occurred to me.”

““Sir Tristano spoke: “Stop! You are taking the great green pearl!”“Naturally!” said the voice from a point close behind. “That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim’s valuables!””

“You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.”

“They call me a renegade.The epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!”

“Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.”

“I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.”

“I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.”

“A single question remained, the age-old cry of anguish: “How could one so beautiful be so base?””

“Shimrod said: “Once I thought of you as a child in a woman’s body.”“The child seems to have wandered away.””

““You drink only sparingly. Is the beer too thin?”“No at all. I merely wish to keep my wits about me. It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who.””

“Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.”

“He said that humanity in the main was crass, stupid, boorish and vulgar, and that I could learn at least this much from you.”

“Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.”

“Dango, Pume, Thwither: down with Visbhume’s breeches; let him hold his backside at the ready.”

““If ambush I must, then ambush I will,” Aillas muttered to himself. “A fig for chivalry, at least until the war is won.””

“Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset.”

““I would define ‘avarice’ as a consequence of the human estate: a condition arising from turbulence and inequality. In none of the paradises, where conditions are no doubt optimum, does ‘avarice’ exert force. Here, we are men struggling toward perfection and ‘avarice’ is a station along the way.””

““It is no hardship whatever,” said Aillas. “You have never strained at the deed. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and suddenly you find the idea incredible. Do you not sense a taint of unreality?””

“Aillas replied that while King Audry cited several points of technical interest, and used the resources of abstract logic in an adroit manner, he had actually made no connection with reality.”

“You are a particularly clever girl: almost as clever as you are appealing to the eye.”

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.””

““We are supposed to set you a good example,” said Devonet. “As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree.”“Then I am a lady of refinement well and truly,” said Madouc, “since I did not wish to be found.””

““Poor Pymfyd! Your world is built of fear and dread! As for me, I have no time for such emotions.”“I will say only this: persons who fear nothing are soon dead.””

“Madouc, this is my advice: pick up yonder clod of dirt, and tender it to that pop-eyed little imp, speaking these words: “Zocco, with this token I both imburse and reimburse you, in full fee and total account, now and then, anon and for ever, in this world and all others, and in every other conceivable respect, for each and every service you have performed for me or in my behalf, real or imaginary, to the limits of time, in all directions.””

“What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace and egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men.”

“I have seen all I care to see and heard rather more.”

“King Aillas talks softly and with great politeness; he has the uncomfortable skill of calling one a false-hearted blackguard, a liar, a cheat and a villain, but making it seem a fulsome compliment.”

“Sir, your ideas are incorrect in every possible respect.”

““Dame Fairy of the Silver Eyes: allow me to put you a question, which is this: where should I seek the Holy Grail?”Twisk jumped high in the air, pirouetted, settled slowly to the ground. “I am not an index of the world’s worries. I know nothing either of Christian crockery nor truant time! And now: silence!”

“He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.”

“In measured tones he answered Madouc: “Your condition lacks dignity; you bring ridicule upon us all.”Madouc gave a stony shrug. “If you do not like what you see, look elsewhere.””

““Tell me, then! What is so important?”“I feel much the same. Say on.””

“I may be called upon to address the company. No one will listen, of course, which is just as well, since I have nothing to say.”

“He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.”

“The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.”

“The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.”

“Gambling, in the ultimate study, stems from the passive, the submissive, the irresponsible in human nature; the gambler is one of an inferior lickspittle breed who turns himself belly-upward to the capricious deeds of Luck. Examine now the man of strength and action: he is never led by destiny. He drives on a decided course, manipulates the variables, and instead of submitting to the ordained shape of his life, creates a pattern to his own design.”

““Legality is the mathematics of social conduct,” said Magnus Ridolph. “It is equally as cogent as the mathematics of probability.””

“I suppose if you isolate yourself to such an extent, you more or less must expect a series of emergencies.”

“I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call an absurd set of contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work; they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? That is my other secret.”

“We’ll rack our brains and either solve your problem or come up come up with new and better ones.”

“If one basic axiom controls the cosmos, it must be this: In a situation of infinity every possible condition occurs, not once, but an infinite number of times.”

“Man is a creature whose evolutionary environment has been the open air. His nerves, muscles, and senses have developed across three million years in contiguity with natural earth, crude stone, live wood, wind, and rain. Now this creature is suddenly--on the geologic scale, instantaneously--shifted to an unnatural environment of metal and glass, plastic and plywood, to which his psychic substrata lack all compatibility. The wonder is not that we have so much mental instability but so little.”

“Sorry, I’m not at home. I have gone out to my world Fancy, and I cannot be reached. Call back in a week, unless your business is urgent, in which case call back in a month.”

““You’re sure you want to look into these cognates? You might see things you wouldn’t like.”“So long as I know the truth, I don’t care whether I like it or not.””

“If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.”

“I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.”

“I'm only giving orders because I'm more efficient and smarter than you are.”

“Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.”

““Down we go,” said Paddy. “Now pray to Saint Anthony if you be a good Catholic—”“I'm not,” snapped Fay, “and if you'll give more mind to the boat and less to religion we’ll gain by it.””

“He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.”

“He’s like an imbecile with a pepper shaker; a little makes his food taste good, therefore a lot will make it wonderful.”

“Another busy day! So let’s to business. The clock moves forward; wasted time is life defeated!”

“The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.”

““The crime,” said the Jacynth softly, “is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.””

““It is simple dog-eat-dog,” said Waylock. It’s basic battle for survival, fiercer and more brutal than ever before in the history of man. You have blinded yourself; you subscribe to false theories; you are permeated with your obsession—not only you but all of us. If we faced the facts of existence, our palliatories would be less crowded.””

“The history of man is a compendium of such evil. We are an evolutionary product, descendants of predators. A few synthetic foods aside, every morsel eaten by man is taken from another living thing. We are intended for murder; we kill to exist!”

“A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it’s lessening the tension.”

“A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.”

“Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy.”

“The merchant voiced an inarticulate protest. Glystra glared at him, “Do you think I trust you?”“Trust?” said the merchant with a puzzled expression. “Trust? What word is that?” And he tested it several times more.”

“Speaking our language, you will understand us—and if you can think as another man thinks, you cannot dislike him.”

““Truth” is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.”

““I learned a great deal,” said Beran. “And then I lost all heart for further learning.”“But I am something other than a mental process,” said Beran. “I am a man. I must reckon with the whole of myself.””

“There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.”

“Your thoughts move with the deft precision of worm-tracks in the mud.”

“When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.”

“Kergan Banbeck threw up his hands, turned once more to the sacerdote. “How can I halt his nonsense? How can I make him see reason?The sacerdote reflected. “He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own.””

“Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.”

““It sees that you are wrong, that you are guided by faith indeed.”The Demie said mildly, “Facts can never be reconciled with faith.””

“If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.”

“How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real...”

“Music is like a language: you cannot understand it unless you learn it, or more accurately, are born into it.”

“Roger tried to find out all about her: he wanted, in one brief hour, to make up for a lifetime of non-acquaintance, a lifetime for all practical purposes wasted.”

“He was neither lazy nor incompetent; he merely had occupational claustrophobia.”

“We are sufficiently at the mercy of machines, Roger; if our music must necessarily be mechanical, then it is time for us to throw in the sponge, and abandon all hope for the future of humanity.”

“And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?”

““I'm sure you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”Madoc Roswyn laughed a soft forlorn laugh. “The sad truth is that I didn’t care—which may be worse.””

“He looked around the landscape. Drenched in the golden haze of late afternoon it seemed wonderfully tranquil and beautiful, though permeated with a sense of remoteness and even melancholy, like a scene remembered from one’s youth.”

““Now it seems that Roger has once more taken up with Miss Roswyn. I can’t say that I approve, but he has not troubled to ask my advice.” She heaved a sigh. “But I am sure that the world will never go precisely to my liking.”“Probably not, and I must reconcile myself to the fact.””

“In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.”

“The life we’ve been leading couldn’t last forever. It’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did.”

“Claghorn had long insisted that no human condition endured forever, with the corollary that the more complicated such a condition, the greater its susceptibility to change.”

“I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man’s accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.”

“You emphasize morality. But the ultimate basis of morality is survival. What promotes survival is good; what induces mortifaction is bad.”

“Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.”

“Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary.”

“Ghyl laughed also. “If I'm too serious, you're too irresponsible.”Ghyl pondered a moment. “This is perhaps the case, in a world left to itself. But society imposes order. Living in a society, it is not insane to be responsible.””

“Control is necessary and even good—so long as I do the controlling.”

““Tomorrow?”“Sh.” She put her hand across his lips. “Never say the word!””

“Shanne said, “You are quiet; are you sad?”“But,” she added in a soft voice, “what can be—can be.””

“IF THERE BE HERE LESSON OR MORAL, IT LIES BEYOND THE COMPETENCE OF HIM WHO INSCRIBES THIS RECORD.”

“What, given the circumstances, would have been Emphyrio’s course of action?Very well, thought Ghyl: it shall be Truth, and let the consequences fall where they may.”

“The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.”

“Gassoon, for all his lore, subscribed to a common fallacy: he assumed that all those whom he encountered appraised him in the same terms as he did himself.”

“Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat.”

““Let him talk as he will!” scoffed Zamp. “His motives are not at all obscure.””

“I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

“Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.”

“I fear, Master Zamp, that you are a victim to your own perfervid imagination.”

“My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.”

“Your character, Apollon Zamp, is marred by a certain paltriness of spirit, a diffused universal distrust which I truly deplore.”

““Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.””

““Let them scoff as they see fit! I will never compromise what I consider my art, especially for the sake of gain!”“For the sake of gain I’d compromise the art of my grandmother,” muttered Zamp under his breath.”

“Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!”

“It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself.”

““You must save yourselves,” Rogol Domedonfors told them. “You have ignored the ancient wisdom, you have been too indolent to learn, you have sought easy complacence from religion, rather than facing manfully to the world.””

“What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously."I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.”

“Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.”

“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”

“His brain ached with the want of knowing.”

“Enter, my friend, enter. How goes your trade?""In all candor, not too well," said Cugel. "I am both perplexed and disappointed, for my talismans are not obviously useless.”

“I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.”

“Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?”

“Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.”

“"The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)”

“Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.”

“And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.”

“I am not called Cugel the Clever for nothing.”