The World-Thinker (1945)

• “But why do you force upon men, a million years of this wretched existence?” asked Lanarck.
  Laoome gave an untranslatable mental shrug.
  “I am just, and indeed benevolent,” he said. “These men worship me as a god. Upon a certain hillock, which they hold sacred, they bring their sick and wounded. There, if the whim takes me, I restore them to health. So far as their existence is concerned, they relish the span of their life as much as you do yours.”
  “Yet in creating these worlds, you are responsible for the happiness of the inhabitants. If you were truly benevolent, why should you permit disease and terror to exist?”
  Laoome again gave his mental shrug. “I might say that I have this universe of our own as a model. Perhaps there is another Laoome dreaming out the worlds we ourselves live on.”
  • Thrilling Wonder Stories (Summer 1945), p. 42

Sanatoris Short-Cut (1948)

• Gambling, in the ultimate study, stems from the passive, the submissive, the irresponsible in human nature; the gambler is one of an inferior lickspittle breed who turns himself belly-upward to the capricious deeds of Luck. Examine now the man of strength and action: he is never led by destiny. He drives on a decided course, manipulates the variables, and instead of submitting to the ordained shape of his life, creates a pattern to his own design.
  • Startling Stories (September 1948), p. 113

• “Legality is the mathematics of social conduct,” said Magnus Ridolph. “It is equally as cogent as the mathematics of probability.”
  • Startling Stories (September 1948), p. 117

The Men Return (1957)

• Man had dominated the Earth by virtue of a single assumption: that an effect could be traced to a cause, itself the effect of a previous cause. Manipulation of this basic law yielded rich results; there seemed no need for any other tool or instrumentality. Man congratulated himself on his generalized structure. He could live on desert, on plain or ice, in forest or in city; Nature had not shaped him to a special environment.
  He was unaware of his vulnerability. Logic was the special environment; the brain was the special tool.
  • Infinity Science Fiction (July 1957)

Rumfuddle (1973)

Novella originally published in Robert Silverberg (ed.), Three Trips in Time and Space

Placed eighth in the 1974 Locus Poll Award for Best Novella.

• I suppose if you isolate yourself to such an extent, you more or less must expect a series of emergencies.
  • Section 2 (p. 168)

• I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call an absurd set of contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work; they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? That is my other secret.
  • Section 3 (p. 169)

• We’ll rack our brains and either solve your problem or come up come up with new and better ones.
  • Section 3 (p. 172)

• If one basic axiom controls the cosmos, it must be this: In a situation of infinity every possible condition occurs, not once, but an infinite number of times.
  • Section 4 (pp. 173-174)

• Man is a creature whose evolutionary environment has been the open air. His nerves, muscles, and senses have developed across three million years in contiguity with natural earth, crude stone, live wood, wind, and rain. Now this creature is suddenly--on the geologic scale, instantaneously--shifted to an unnatural environment of metal and glass, plastic and plywood, to which his psychic substrata lack all compatibility. The wonder is not that we have so much mental instability but so little.
  • Section 5 (p. 177)

• Sorry, I’m not at home. I have gone out to my world Fancy, and I cannot be reached. Call back in a week, unless your business is urgent, in which case call back in a month.
  • Section 6 (p. 184)

• “You’re sure you want to look into these cognates? You might see things you wouldn’t like.”
  “So long as I know the truth, I don’t care whether I like it or not.”
  • Section 6 (p. 186)

• If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.
  • Section 12 (p. 211)

• I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.
  • Section 12 (p. 218)

The Dying Earth (1950)

• Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!
  • Chapter 1, "Turjan of Miir"

• It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself.
  • Chapter 3, "T'Sais"

• “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.”
  • Chapter 5, "Ulan Dhor"

• "What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously.
  "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue."
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

• Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

• "My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance."
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

• His brain ached with the want of knowing.
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)

• "Enter, my friend, enter. How goes your trade?"
  "In all candor, not too well," said Cugel. "I am both perplexed and disappointed, for my talismans are not obviously useless."
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• "The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.
  • Chapter 2, "Cil"

• And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.
  • Chapter 2, "Cil"

• I am not called Cugel the Clever for nothing.
  • Chapter 3, "The Mountains of Magnatz"

• Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• There can be no doubt as to the facts as I have stated them. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• "Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar."
  "Not in every aspect," said Cugel.
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.
  • Chapter 5, "The Pilgrims"

• The purportedly free was seldom as represented.
  • Chapter 6, "The Cave in the Forest"

• "All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three."
  • Chapter 7, "The Manse of Iucounu"

Cugel's Saga (1983)

• He indicated the pair of grotesques. "For instance, I have seldom seen objects so studiously repulsive as this pair of bibelots. Skillfully done, agreed! Notice the detail in these horrid little ears! The snouts, the fangs: the malignance is almost real! Still, they are undeniably the work of a diseased imagination."
  The objects reared erect. One of them spoke in a rasping voice: "No doubt Cugel has good reason for his unkind words; still, neither Gark nor I can take them lightly."
  • Chapter 1, section 1, "Flutic"

• I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.
  • Chapter 1, section 2, "The Inn of Blue Lamps"

• "I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?"
  Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel."
  • Chapter 2, section 2, "Lausicaa"

• It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.
  • Chapter 2, section 3, "The Ocean of Sighs"

• “Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”
  “Decidedly so, if the villain, for the purposes of his joke, thinks to simulate the altruist.”
  “Then how will you know villain from altruist?”
  Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.”
  • Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

• “I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?”
  “Absolutely, and in all respects!” declared Cugel. “Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.”
  • Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

• “I think that I will not answer that question,” he said at last. “I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.”
  “Half as many,” Clissum pointed out delicately.
  • Chapter 4, section 2, "The Caravan"

• "At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt," stated the Nolde. "We are not the fools that certain untidy ruffians might suppose."
  • Chapter 5, section 1, "The Seventeen Virgins"

• An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
  • Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

• "The folk are peculiar in many ways," said Erwig. "They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice. What are your own views?"
  "The rite should be conducted as you describe," said Cugel. "No other method carries weight."
  Erwig refilled Cugel's glass. "I consider this an important endorsement of our views!"
  • Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

• It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.
  • Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

• I give dignity second place to expedience.
  • Chapter 6, section 1, "The Four Wizards"

• "Very well," said Cugel. "I will ride with you to Taun Tassel, but you must accept these three terces in full, exact, final, comprehensive and complete compensation for the ride and every other aspect, adjunct, by-product and consequence, either direct or indirect, of the said ride, renouncing every other claim, now, and forever, including all times of the past and future, without exception, and absolving me, in part and in whole, from any and all further obligation."
  Iucounu held up small balled fists and gritted his teeth toward the sky. "I repudiate your entire paltry philosophy! I find zest in giving!"
  • Chapter 6, section 2, "Spatterlight"

Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

• "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."
  • "The Murthe", chapter 2

• Ildefonse said ponderously: "If your analysis is correct, we must undertake to secure the future against this pangynic nightmare."
  • "The Murthe", chapter 2

• "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."
  • "The Murthe", chapter 3

• We need no chieftain; such folk eat more than their share.
  • "Fader's Waft", chapter 13

• 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.
  • "Morreion" (first published in Flashing Swords #1, March 1973), chapter 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.
  • "Morreion", Ch. 6

• "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."
  • "Morreion", Ch. 8

• 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.
  • "Morreion", chapter 8

• Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of the nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.
  • "Morreion", chapter 8

• “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.”

  • "Morreion"

The Star King (1964)

Page numbers from the omnibus trade paperback edition The Demon Princes: Volume One published by Orb ISBN 978-0-312-85302-0 in May 1997

• You espouse a very popular doctrine, ethical pragmatism, which always turns out to be the doctrine of self-interest.
  • Chapter 1 (p. 12)

• You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful?
  • Chapter 2 (p. 27)

• What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.
  • Chapter 2 (p. 28)

• Revenge is not an ignoble motive, when it works to a productive end.
  • Chapter 2 (p. 28)

• Humanity many times has had sad experience of superpowerful police forces...As soon as (the police) slip out from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth, jingling their weapons in megalomaniac euphoria. People thereupon become not masters, but servants. Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly overzealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption. The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.
  • Chapter 3 (pp. 32-33)

• “Everyone is the same,” he told himself. “Anxious to arrive and, when they leave, wondering why they came.”
  • Chapter 3 (p. 37)

• There are also those who, like the author, ensconce themselves on a thunderous crag of omniscience, and with protestations of humility which are either unconvincing or totally absent, assume the obligation of appraisal, commendation, derogation or denunciation of their contemporaries. Still, by and large it is an easier job than digging a ditch.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 59)

• Conjecture without facts was useless; he must deal with events as they occurred.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 67)

• Deeming the unsubstantiated dogma of a localized religious cult to be an undignified and unsuitable base on which to erect the chronology of galactic man, the members of this convention hereby declare that time shall now be reckoned from the year 2000 A.D. (Old System), which becomes the year 0. The revolution of Earth about Sol remains the standard annual unit.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 73)

• Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to those basic enemies.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 74)

• The tighter the discipline of an art form, the more subjective the criteria of taste.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 79)

• Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.
  • Chapter 8 (p. 83)

• “Beauty comes in often to drink. A spaceman, he claims himself, but as to this I can’t be certain. I have often declared myself a great lover. All of us lie, as much or more than necessary. ‘What is truth?’ asks Pons Pilatus, in the fable, and I answer: ‘A commodity as cheap as air which we hide as if it were as precious as yewl stone.’”
  • Chapter 9 (p. 107)

• Destiny could not bring him this far only to deal him failure!
  • Chapter 10 (p. 122)

The Killing Machine (1964)

Page numbers from the omnibus trade paperback edition The Demon Princes: Volume One published by Orb ISBN 978-0-312-85302-0 in May 1997

• “Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth—and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort....We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolute—is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.”
  • Chapter 3 (p. 179)

• A detached attitude toward the problems of others is not illegal.
  • Chapter 3 (p. 180)

• “And thereby hangs a tale,” as the monkey said while describing the cat’s rear-quarters.
  • Chapter 4 (p. 193)

• Money lost, little lost.
  Honor lost, much lost.
  Pluck lost, all lost.
  • Chapter 8 (p. 221)

• The central problem, so it seemed, was to learn from whose eye he looked forth. Much, after all, would depend upon his viewpoint.
  • Chapter 12 (p. 282)

The Palace of Love (1967)

Page numbers from the omnibus trade paperback edition The Demon Princes: Volume One published by Orb ISBN 978-0-312-85302-0 in May 1997

• “Don’t you think it’s a bit—well, intense? Are people really interested in these matters?”
  “If not they should be.”
  “Easily said, but it’s no way to run a magazine. People don’t want to really understand anything; they want to think they have learned without the necessity of application.”
  • Chapter 4 (p. 327)

• A man without friends is a tree without leaves.
  • Chapter 5 (p. 341)

• I have much to say about the world, but every year the compulsion dwindles. Let them live and die; it is all one to me.
  • Chapter 5 (p. 342)

• There is too much knowledge already in the world; we use facts as crutches, to the impoverishment of our senses. Facts are falsehoods; logic is deceit. I know a single system of communication: the declaiming of poetry.
  • Chapter 5 (p. 343)

• I am an unhappy man. I am haunted by my inability to express the inexpressible, to come to terms with the unknown. The pursuit of beauty is, of course, a major psychological drive. It its various guises—which is to say, the urge to perfection, the yearning to merge with the eternal, the explorer’s restlessness, the realization of an Absolute created by ourselves, yet larger than our totality—it is perhaps the most important human thrust.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 346)

• Art implies discipline; the more excellent the art, the more rigorous the discipline.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 356)

• Candor is never indiscreet. Truth, which is to say, the reflection of life, is beautiful.
  • Chapter 9 (p. 381)

• What good is notoriety if your friends are unable to profit from it?
  • Chapter 9 (p. 381)

• My great pleasure is creation—of this I never tire. Some of my guests have complained of a gentle melancholy which hangs in the air; I agree that the mood exists. The explanation, I believe, arises from the fugacity of beauty, the tragic pavanne to which all of us step.
  • Chapter 12 (p. 415)

• “Be on your way; this is holy soil.”
  “How can you be so sure? It looks like ordinary dirt.”
  • Chapter 12 (p. 419)

• The symbologist made a cryptic sign. “That remains to be seen, as the cat said who voided into the sugar bowl.”
  • Chapter 14 (p. 432)

The Face (1979)

Page numbers from the omnibus trade paperback edition The Demon Princes: Volume Two published by Orb ISBN 978-0-312-85316-7 in September 1997

• I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.
  • Chapter 1 (p. 12)

• If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.
  • Chapter 3 (pp. 17-18)

• Remember, not all lawyers are fools!
  • Chapter 4 (p. 39)

• I am a legalist and a financial expert, I admit as much; but my disregard for the law goes no further.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 56)

• For many years my nerves were like electric wires. Then I discovered the first axiom of human accord: I accept each person on his own terms. I keep a close tongue in my head; I offer opinions only when so solicited. What a remarkable change! Dissension vanishes, novel facts emerge, digestion flows like a wide river.
  • Chapter 7 (pp. 75-76)

• “What are you doing here?”
  “I’m looking at you, and grateful for the opportunity.”
  • Chapter 10 (p. 124)

• The seconds marched past, traversing that mysterious boundary which separates future from past.
  • Chapter 11 (p. 145)

• “May I inquire as to your motives?”
  “Why do you trouble to ask? You would believe nothing told you.”
  • Chapter 13 (p. 166)

• My own concepts in this regard are easy and clear, and I am sure that the word “simplistic” will be used by my critics. These folk are callow and turgid of intellect; I am reassured by their howls and yelps.
  • Chapter 14 (pp. 172-173)

• My wealth is my shelf of books!
  • Chapter 14 (p. 173)

The Book of Dreams (1981)

Page numbers from the omnibus trade paperback edition The Demon Princes: Volume Two published by Orb ISBN 978-0-312-85316-7 in September 1997

• I often reflect upon the word “morality,” the most troublesome and confusing word of all.
  There is no single or supreme morality; there are many, each defining the mode by which a system of entities optimally interacts.
  The eminent entomologist Fabre, observing a mantis in the act of devouring its mate, exclaimed: “What an abominable custom!”
  The ordinary man, during a day’s time, may be obliged to act by the terms of a half dozen different moralities. Some of these acts, appropriate at one moment, may the next moment be considered obscene or opprobrious in terms of another morality.
  The person who, let us say, expects generosity from a bank, efficient flexibility from a government agency, open-mindedness from a religious institution will be disappointed. In each purview the notions represent immorality. The poor fool might as quickly discover love among the mantises.
  • Chapter 3 (pp. 224-225)

• Urbanized men and women experience not life but the abstraction of life, on ever higher levels of refinement and dislocation from reality. They become processors of ideas, and have evolved such esoteric occupations as the critic, the critic who criticizes criticism, and even the critic who criticizes criticism of criticism. It is a very sad misuse of human talent and energy.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 264)

• “You were notified in regard to a recent conclave of the Dexad at Wild Isle?”
  “Yes. I chose not to attend. In discussions I find myself consistently a minority of one, and my presence seems unnecessary.”
  • Chapter 8 (p. 282)

• “As always there is someone to hold a tight hand on the purse strings—usually the most affluent of the persons in authority.”
  “This is how they become affluent.”
  • Chapter 12 (p. 322)

• Discipline in itself is not a corrupt concept, only discipline that is imposed rather than self-calculated.
  • Chapter 14 (p. 347)

• It does no good to hurry here. In fact, it may even be against the law.
  • Chapter 15 (p. 361)

• “Intelligence” demands the most strict of definitions, since the word is easily and often abused. Intelligence rates the quality of Gaean man’s competence at altering environment to suit his convenience, or, more generally, the solution of problems. The corollaries to the idea are several. Among them: In the absence of problems, intelligence cannot be measured. A creature with a large, complicated brain is not necessarily intelligent. Raw abstract intelligence is a meaningless concept.
  • Chapter 18 (p. 383)

• Alice put her hands on his shoulder. “And now, what of you?”
  “What of me, how?”
  “You’re so quiet and subdued! You worry me. Are you well?”
  “Quite well. Deflated, perhaps. I have been deserted by my enemies. Treesong is dead. The affair is over. I am done.”
  • Chapter 20 (p. 397; closing words)

Suldrun's Garden (1983)

All page numbers from “The Complete Lyonesse” edition, published by Gollancz

• Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
  • Chapter 3, section 3 (p. 31)

• Aillas groaned. “Destiny could never be so unkind.”
  Suldrun said in a soft voice: “Destiny doesn’t really care.”
  • Chapter 11, section 1 (p. 103)

• Kings, like children, tend to be opportunistic. Generosity only spoils them. They equate affability with weakness and hasten to exploit it.
  • Chapter 12, section 2 (p. 122)

• Who is seducing whom? If we are working to the same ends, there is no need for so many cross-purposes.
  • Chapter 13, section 3 (p. 136; Shimrod to Melancthe)

• What a strange and unfamiliar world if everyone were treated according to his deserts!
  • Chapter 25, section 1 (p. 270)

• The colour, noise and festivity failed to elevate Carfilhiot’s mood; in fact—so he told himself—never had he witnessed so much pointless nonsense.
  • Chapter 25, section 3 (p. 280)

• Die then. This is my cure for sore knees.
  • Chapter 26, section 4 (p. 299)

The Green Pearl (1985)

All page numbers from “The Complete Lyonesse” edition, published by Gollancz

• “Are you yourself a Christian?”
  The young man made a negative sign. “The concepts of religion baffle me.”
  “This inscrutability is perhaps not unintentional,” said the ex-priest. “It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.”
  • Chapter 1, section 4 (p. 367)

• A notable scheme has occurred to me.
  • Chapter 1, section 4 (p. 371)

• “Sir Tristano spoke: “Stop! You are taking the great green pearl!”
  “Naturally!” said the voice from a point close behind. “That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim’s valuables!”
  • Chapter 1, section 4 (p. 375)

• You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.
  • Chapter 3, section 2 (p. 394)

• They call me a renegade.
  The epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!
  • Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 418)

• Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.
  • Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 419)

• I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.
  • Chapter 5, section 3 (p. 430)

• I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.
  • Chapter 5, section 3 (p. 430)

• A single question remained, the age-old cry of anguish: “How could one so beautiful be so base?”
  • Chapter 6, section 1 (p. 434)

• Shimrod said: “Once I thought of you as a child in a woman’s body.”
  Melancthe smiled a cool smile. “And now?”
  “The child seems to have wandered away.”
  • Chapter 6, section 1 (p. 436)

• “You drink only sparingly. Is the beer too thin?”
  “No at all. I merely wish to keep my wits about me. It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who.”
  • Chapter 6, section 4 (p. 447)

• Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
  • Chapter 6, section 5 (p. 449)

• He said that humanity in the main was crass, stupid, boorish and vulgar, and that I could learn at least this much from you.
  • Chapter 6, section 5 (p. 451)

• Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
  • Chapter 8, section 3 (p. 480)

• Dango, Pume, Thwither: down with Visbhume’s breeches; let him hold his backside at the ready.
  • Chapter 9, section 4 (p. 505)

• “If ambush I must, then ambush I will,” Aillas muttered to himself. “A fig for chivalry, at least until the war is won.”
  • Chapter 10, section 3 (p. 518)

• Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset.
  • Chapter 11, section 3 (p. 538)

• “I would define ‘avarice’ as a consequence of the human estate: a condition arising from turbulence and inequality. In none of the paradises, where conditions are no doubt optimum, does ‘avarice’ exert force. Here, we are men struggling toward perfection and ‘avarice’ is a station along the way.”
  • Chapter 12, section 1 (p. 545)

• “It is no hardship whatever,” said Aillas. “You have never strained at the deed. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and suddenly you find the idea incredible. Do you not sense a taint of unreality?”
  • Chapter 13, section 3 (p. 571)

• Aillas replied that while King Audry cited several points of technical interest, and used the resources of abstract logic in an adroit manner, he had actually made no connection with reality.
  • Chapter 16, section 2 (p. 626)

• You are a particularly clever girl: almost as clever as you are appealing to the eye.
  • Chapter 16, section 3 (p. 635)

• “Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”
  • Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)

Madouc (1989)

All page numbers from “The Complete Lyonesse” edition, published by Gollancz

• “We are supposed to set you a good example,” said Devonet. “As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree.”
  “Then I am a lady of refinement well and truly,” said Madouc, “since I did not wish to be found.”
  • Chapter 3, section 1 (p. 718)

• “Poor Pymfyd! Your world is built of fear and dread! As for me, I have no time for such emotions.”
  Pymfyd spoke in an even voice. “You are a royal princess and I may not call you a witless little fool, even should the thought cross my mind.”
  Madouc turned him a sad blue-eyed glance. “So that, after all, is your concept of me.”
  “I will say only this: persons who fear nothing are soon dead.”
  • Chapter 3, section 3 (p. 722)

• Madouc, this is my advice: pick up yonder clod of dirt, and tender it to that pop-eyed little imp, speaking these words: “Zocco, with this token I both imburse and reimburse you, in full fee and total account, now and then, anon and for ever, in this world and all others, and in every other conceivable respect, for each and every service you have performed for me or in my behalf, real or imaginary, to the limits of time, in all directions.”
  • Chapter 3, section 3 (p. 731)

• What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace and egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men.
  • Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 750)

• “I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
  “You have no friends?”
  “No.”
  “And what of the future?”
  “The future stops at ‘now’.”
  “As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
  “What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
  “Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
  Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea.
  Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
  “I don’t know.”
  Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”
  Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”
  • Chapter 5, section 4 (p. 783)

• I have seen all I care to see and heard rather more.
  • Chapter 6, section 1 (p. 792)

• King Aillas talks softly and with great politeness; he has the uncomfortable skill of calling one a false-hearted blackguard, a liar, a cheat and a villain, but making it seem a fulsome compliment.
  • Chapter 6, section 5 (p. 807)

• Sir, your ideas are incorrect in every possible respect.
  • Chapter 7, section 5 (p. 848)

• “Dame Fairy of the Silver Eyes: allow me to put you a question, which is this: where should I seek the Holy Grail?”
  “Determine its location and go to that spot; that is my wise advice.”
  Travante spoke tentatively: “If you could guide me to my lost youth, I would be most grateful.”
  Twisk jumped high in the air, pirouetted, settled slowly to the ground. “I am not an index of the world’s worries. I know nothing either of Christian crockery nor truant time! And now: silence!
  • Chapter 8, section 3 (p. 881)

• He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.
  • Chapter 8, section 5 (p. 904)

• In measured tones he answered Madouc: “Your condition lacks dignity; you bring ridicule upon us all.”
  Madouc gave a stony shrug. “If you do not like what you see, look elsewhere.”
  • Chapter 9, section 4 (p. 928)

• “Tell me, then! What is so important?”
  “Your life! I could not bear that you should lose it!”
  “I feel much the same. Say on.”
  • Chapter 10, section 2 (p. 948)

• I may be called upon to address the company. No one will listen, of course, which is just as well, since I have nothing to say.
  • Chapter 10, section 3 (p. 954)

• He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.
  • Chapter 11, section 1 (p. 967)

• The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.
  • Chapter 11, section 2 (p. 968)