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"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." <br.> "Not in every aspect," said Cugel.
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Your character, Apollon Zamp, is marred by a certain paltriness of spirit, a diffused universal distrust which I truly deplore.
Jack Vance
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A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain.... The solution is not splicing the rope; it's lessening the tension.
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Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
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I'm only giving orders because I'm more efficient and smarter than you are.
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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.
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It sees that you are wrong, that you are guided by faith indeed.
The Demie fell silent. His face seemed to stiffen.
Are these not facts? asked Joaz. How do you reconcile them with your faith?
The Demie said mildly, Facts can never be reconciled with faith.
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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.
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This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.
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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.
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Claghorn had long insisted that no human condition endured forever, with the corollary that the more complicated such a condition, the greater its susceptibility to change.
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Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.
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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.
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Down we go, said Paddy. Now pray to Saint Anthony if you be a good Catholic—
I'm not, snapped Fay, and if you'll give more mind to the boat and less to religion we'll gain by it.
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The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.
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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!
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The life we've been leading couldn't last forever. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.
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What a strange and unfamiliar world if everyone were treated according to his deserts!
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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.
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Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.
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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."
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Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.
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Damned meddlers. It's hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it's just curiosity.
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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.
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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.
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We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
Jack Vance
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Born:
August 28, 1916
Died:
May 26, 2013
(aged 96)
Bio:
John Holbrook "Jack" Vance was an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer.
Known for:
The Dying Earth (1950)
The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)
Cugel's Saga (1983)
The Dragon Masters (1962)
Emphyrio (1969)
Most used words:
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