"Food for the hungry Isle. There was your real thinking man’s treasure, he told himself, beside which gold and twinkling jewels were merest trinkets, or the pointy breasts of young love or words of poets or the pointed stars themselves that astrologers cherished and that made men drunk with distance and expanse."

"Lord, what romantical fools men were, to overpass the known and good in order to strain and stretch after the mysterious merely unknown. Were dreams simply better than reality? Had fancy always more style?"

"But oh, this lifelong servitude to girls—whimsical, innocent, calculating, icicle-eyed and hearted, fleeting, tripping little demons! White, slim-necked, sharp-toothed, restlessly bobbing weasels with the soulful eyes of lemurs!"

"That was another trouble with women, they were never there when you wanted or really needed them. They helped each other, all right, but they expected men to do all sorts of impossible feats of derring-do to prove themselves worthy of the great gift of their love (and what was that when you got down to it?—a fleeting clench-and-wriggle in the dark, illuminated only by the mute, incomprehensible perfection of a dainty breast, that left you bewildered and sad)."

"Inconsiderate creatures, gods were."

"And just think what rare delights—nay, what whole sets of ecstasies and blisses—this much gold would buy. How fortunate that metal was mindless slave of the man who held it!"

"“There are some things man was not meant to know,” the Mouser said in a most portentous voice. Then, swiftly switching to the familiar, “or rather, since I am in no way superstitious, there are some things that have not yet yielded to our philosophy.”"

"For the gods have very sharp ears for boasts, or for declarations of happiness and self-satisfaction, or for assertions of a firm intention to do this or that, or for statements that this or that must surely happen, or any other words hinting that a man is in the slightest control of his own destiny. And the gods are jealous, easily angered, perverse, and swift to thwart."

"Now it may be that in the world of Newhon there are gods of whom even Death does not know and who from time to time take pleasure in putting obstacles in his path. Or it may be that Chance is quite as great a power as Necessity."

"The more brilliant the enchanted male, the stupider the enchanting female."

"When one achieves revenge, the innocent perforce suffer."

"This was ecstacy indeed, he assured himself. It seemed to him that he was now in the Ninth and topmost Heaven, where a few select heroes luxuriate and dream and submit themselves to almost unendurable pleasures, at whiles glancing down with lazy amusement at all the gods toiling at their sparrow-watching and incense-sniffing and destiny-directing on the many tiers below."

"With a happy roaring shout only he could hear, blood rushed through the Mouser’s arteries toward his center, reviving his limp manhood in a mere moment, as a magically summoned genie offhandedly builds a tower."

"He knew that sooner or later, in spite of all protecting charms and precautions, Death would creep silently on him or spring suddenly from some unguarded moment. This very night his horoscope might signal Death’s instant escapeless approach; and though men lived by lies, treating truth’s very self as lie to be exploited, the stars remained the stars."

"Let never the gems of business be mixed with the jewels of pleasure."

"The worst thing about mountain climbing is that the easy parts go so quickly."

"Knowledge takes precedence over death."

"He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows."

"Eventually the tale came to an end, suddenly and seemingly in the middle, like a piece of foreign music."

"They are in their fashion fearless, irreligiously considering themselves the coequals of destiny and having only contempt for the Demigoddess of Chance, the Imp of Luck, and the Demon of Improbability."

"It was more a patriotic than religious matter with Fafhrd. He believed in Odin only during moments of sentimental weakness."

"That is as far from the truth as I am from the Secret of the Sphinx."

"It was the laughter of the Elder Gods observing their creature man and noting their omissions, miscalculations and mistakes."

"Know it or not, man treads between abysses a tightrope that has neither beginning nor end."

"I can see now that if I’d stayed I’d have gone the way of Pulg and all such Great Men—fat, power-racked, lieutenant-plagued, smothered with false-hearted dancing girls, and finally falling into the arms of religion. At least I’m saved that last chronic ailment, which is worse than the dropsy."

"There would have been no insurmountable problem at all, of course, if Bwadres had only had that touch of realism about money matters that, when a true crisis arises, is almost invariably shown by even the fattest, greediest priest or the skinniest, most unworldly holy man."

"Pulg, alongside his pink streak of sentimentality, had recently taken to sporting a gray one of superstition."

"Bored and insecure men will loose arrows at dust motes."

"Aye, there’s the bitter core of all freedom: no pay!"

"“So tell me, giant philosopher, why we’re not dukes,” the Gray Mouser demanded, unrolling a forefinger from the fist on his knee so that it pointed across the brazier at Fafhrd. “Or emperors, for that matter, or demigods.” “We are not dukes because we’re no man’s man,” Fafhrd replied smugly, setting his shoulders against the stone horse-trough. “Even the duke must butter up a king, and demigods the gods. We butter no one. We so our own way, choosing our own adventures—and our own follies! Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.” “There speaks the hound turned out by his last master and not yet found new boots to slaver on,” the Mouser retorted with comradely sardonic impudence."

"The Devourers want to brood about their great service to the many universes—it is their claim that servile customers make the most obedient subjects for the gods."

"The Devourers want not only the patronage of all beings in all universes, but—doubtless because they are afraid someone will some day raise the ever-unpleasant question of the true worth of things—they want all their customers reduced to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale."

"Girls had a way of blotting out all lesser, but not thereby despicable, delights. Girls were for dessert."

"They, like many priests, had been much too fanatical and not nearly as clever as the god they served."

"Too much good luck was always dangerous."

"“What’s the use of knowing the name of a skull? One would never have occasion to talk of it,” said the fat thief loudly. “What interests me is that it has rubies for eyes.”"

"Unlike men, rubies and emeralds do not rest quietly in their graves."

"Let fools seek it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall, poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and forbear."

"Thieves and astrologers moved restlessly in their sleep, sensing that the hours of night and work were drawing near."

"“Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled,” the fluty voice responded. “Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing.”"

"We have searched the wide world over and not found forgetfulness."

"Revenge is empty. It cannot bring back the dead."

"Fafhrd retorted, a little hotly, “Killing in fight isn’t murder.” Again the Mouser shrugged. “Killing is murder, no matter what nice names you give. Just as eating is devouring, and drinking guzzling.”"

"For what is life but greed in action?"

"And I, well, in the month I’ve been here I’ve learned that the only way to survive in civilization is to abide by its unwritten rules—far more important than its laws chiseled in stone—and break them only at peril, in deepest secrecy, and taking all precautions."

"Aye, we played at being mice, forgetting cats are real."

"Women are horrible. I mean, quite as horrible as men. Oh, is there anyone in the wide world that has aught but ice water in his or her veins?"

"I know, I know, the folk here are narrow-visioned, custom-bound. But matched with the twisted minds of civilization, they’re straight as pines."

"Afterward loses too many battles to Too Late."

"Barbarism can match civilization’s every stench. Not one move in our frostbit lives but is strictured by a mad god’s laws, which we call customs, and by black-handed irrationalities from which there is no escape."