Shadow’s End

Sex was pleasurable, sure, but survival was sweeter still.

Does the worm on the hook expect to be rescued simply because the fish have eaten all the other worms?

“Most gods of most worlds have human faces.”

“Because men make them in their image,” Lutha remarked, somewhat bitterly. “To grant mankind license to do what we would do anyway.”

Godmongers have always found it easy to pay for their beliefs with women’s lives.…

“The first rule of governance is never to choose who to sacrifice,” snarled the Procurator. “Or, at least, never to be seen to choose. Death and dismemberment must always be…inadvertent. Everybody’s fault or nobody’s fault!”

Some can see no farther than their mirrors. What wears another face must go unseen.

Blind faith in somebody stepping in to fix things eliminates a lot of emotional stress, so blind faith is what most people have!

Don’t take me for a fool, lovely girl. We fat old things have not laid aside our brains with our silhouettes.

Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can’t.

Fearful people develop their religions as protective devices, ways to manipulate hostile environments, formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies. The more fearful people are, the more enemies they have, the more adversarial language they use.

Also, the god often resembles his followers in behavior and feelings. Angry people have angry gods and vindictive people have vindictive gods, and so forth.

Those who encounter chains of events at two disparate points, without observing the connections, think they have observed coincidence when they have, in fact, seen only consequence.

Every hundred years they would be disillusioned, and each time they would swear to hide their disillusionment in order to retain their power. “We won’t tell anyone,” they’d say. “We won’t let anyone know. We’ll deny it. We’ll defend the traditional teachings!”

Such things that happened before! Men in power had made mistakes or foolish claims and spent the rest of their lives and their successors’ lives defending the indefensible, or hiding it.

Do not wish to live forever. Do not believe that every man-shaped thing is holier than something else. Do not look into the mirror to see the face of God.

As the Gauphin taught, people are ridiculous! We have language and history, we have technology and philosophy, and we still have not achieved good sense and self-control!

“An itchy man is prey to discontent; he’ll suage his flea bites with the blood of kings.”

Surely the common man wouldn’t want that!”

“What common men want most is beer and sex, without disturbances.”

The stories of Old-earth are shared among the people of Old-earth. Even I, Saluez, can identify elephant and whale, ostrich and eagle, serpent and wolf, though they exist no longer. I know that they were and now are not, because of mankind.

“Even pain,” said the king, with no intention of being prophetic, “even pain is preferable to dying of unrelieved ennui.”