Rhialto the Marvellous

Quotes

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

2. 

   "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."

3. 

   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.

4. 

   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.

5. 

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

6. 

   "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."

7. 

   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.

8. 

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

9. 

   "I therefore suggest that in the style of the previous examples, 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."

10. 

    “I am more inclined to punish Hurtiancz for his crassness,” said Ildefonse. “But now he simulates a swinish stupidity to escape my anger.”“Absolute falsity!” roared Hurtiancz. “I simulate nothing!”Ildefonse shrugged. “For all his deficiencies as polemicist and magician, Hurtiancz at least is candid.”

That’s all the quotes.

10 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more