Jack Vance

"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!"

"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."

"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!"

"An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought."

"I therefore suggest that in the style of the previous examples, 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."

"Revenge is not an ignoble motive, when it works to a productive end."

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

"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?"

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“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.”"

"What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life."

"My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance."

"I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise."

"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."

"Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all."

""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."

"All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three."

"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."

"“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."

"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!"

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

"We need no chieftain; such folk eat more than their share."

"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."

"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."

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

"You espouse a very popular doctrine, ethical pragmatism, which always turns out to be the doctrine of self-interest."

"You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful?"

"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."

"Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition."

"His brain ached with the want of knowing."

"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."

"Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted."

""The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)"

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

"I am not called Cugel the Clever for nothing."

"I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies."

"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."

"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."

"The purportedly free was seldom as represented."

"I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs."

"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."

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

"It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality."

"I give dignity second place to expedience."

"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."

"“Everyone is the same,” he told himself. “Anxious to arrive and, when they leave, wondering why they came.”"