Poul Anderson

Quotes

1. And never forget: any planet is a world, as complex and mysterious in its own right, as full of its patterns and contradictions and histories, as Earth ever was.

2. 

   I’m afraid I’m not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven’t figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that’s the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can’t say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more.

   p. 129

3. 

   Then they died.

   And other men came after them. Wars flamed up and burned out; the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books.

   p. 1

4. 

   Hard to say whether personal immortality would be a good thing or not. Not for the masses, surely! Too many of them as it was. But a select few, like Terangi Maclaren—or was it worth the trouble? Even given boats, chess, music, the No Drama, beautiful women and beautiful spectroscopes, life could get heavy.

   p. 36

5. 

   “Do you know,” said Maclaren, “there is one sin which is punished with unfailing certainty, and must therefore be the deadliest sin in all time. Stupidity.”

   p. 62

6. 

   Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for his planet and the Fellowship. But there were limits. You didn’t have to accept Dave’s Calvinism—though its unmerciful God seemed very near this dead star—to swallow the truth that some things were more important than survival. Than even the survival of a cause.

   Maybe I’m trying to find out what those things are, he thought confusedly.

   p. 92

7. 

   Winter lay among the Outer Hebrides. Day was a sullen glimmer between two darknesses, often smothered in snow. When it did not fling itself upon the rocks and burst in freezing spume, the North Atlantic rolled in heavy and gnawing. There was no real horizon; leaden waves met leaden sky and misty leaden light hid the seam.

   p. 8

8. 

   Her rank was higher than his, so high that no one in her family worked productively.

   p. 4

9. 

   On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know.

   p. 131

10. 

    “At least we can put a little sense into life.”

    “I don’t know whether we do or whether we find what was always there,” he replied. “Nor do I care greatly. To me, the important thing is that the purpose—order, beauty, spirit, whatever you want to call it—does exist.”

    p. 148

11. 

    Life was too short for anything but amusement at the human race.

    p. 38

12. 

    People usually take for granted that the way things are is the way things must be.