Jack Vance

Quotes

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

   p. 27

2. 

   His brain ached with the want of knowing.

3. 

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

4. 

   “The idea has the virtue of simplicity,” said Nai the Hever gravely. “I confess that it had not occurred to me. I am always reluctant to pull on strings until I learn where they lead and to what they are attached.”

   p. 137

5. 

   "My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance."

6. 

   "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."

7. 

   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.

8. 

   I see that you will make a competent inspector after all. You have a natural bent for subterfuge and deceit.

   p. 84

9. 

   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.

10. 

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

11. 

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

12. 

    “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.”