Poul Anderson

Quotes

1. I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and wonder.

   p. 176

2. 

   He did not share the widespread present-day faith in astrology. It seemed likeliest to him that sheer accident ruled the world.

   p. 45

3. 

   Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river.

   p. 175

4. 

   Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom?

   p. 130

5. 

   Be calm. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.

   p. 126

6. 

   “Are you that afraid to die?”

   “No. I simply like to live.”

   p. 78

7. 

   “Do you actually hope to convert the whole of mankind?”

   “Belay that! Anyhow, if you mean, Do we hope to make everybody into copies of us? The answer is, No. Mind, I’m not in Parliament or Admiralty, but I follow debates and I read the philosophers. One trouble with the old machine culture was that, by its nature, it did force people to become more and more alike. Not only did this fail in the end—disastrously—but to the extent it succeeded, it was a worse disaster.” Lohannaso smote the rail with a mighty fist. “Damnation, Thomas! We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!”

   p. 119

8. 

   Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.

   p. 107

9. 

   The old man murmured: “Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.”

   p. 124

10. 

    We're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?

11. 

    Don’t get me wrong. These people are mine. I like and in many ways admire them. They’re the salt of the earth. It’s simply that I want other condiments too.

    p. 10

12. 

    The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. “Beyond one or two hundred years back,” Havig once said to me, “the daytime sky is always full of wings.”

    p. 60