“The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity”
“Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.”
“It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests. Can you understand that? Can you understand that in averting the pitfalls and miseries that beset man, Eternity prevents men from finding their own bitter and better solutions, the real solutions that come from conquering difficulty, not avoiding it?”
“But emotion had come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person.”
“Yet there was this to be said for unfavorable relationships in the wealth-distribution equation. It meant the existence of a leisure class and the development of an attractive way of life which, at its best, encouraged culture and grace. As long as the other end of the scale was not too badly off, as long as the leisure classes did not entirely forget their responsibilities while enjoying their privileges, as long as their culture took no obviously unhealthy turn, there was always the tendency in Eternity to forgive the departure from the ideal wealth-distribution pattern and to search for other, less attractive maladjustments.”
“Voy gülümsedi. "İşte bu fena. Ne zaman birisi belirli bir alanda tam bilgi sahibi olmadığını belirterek konuya girse, arkasından o konuda çok açık bir biçimde fikrini belirtecek demektir.”
“Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.”
“Could he tell her any of this? Of course not. Could he tell her that women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man.”
“For the first time the specific and express thought came to him. And though he pushed it away in horror, he knew that, having once come, it would return. The thought was simply this: That he would ruin Eternity, if he had to. The worst of it was that he knew he had the power to do it.”
“He turned to look at her, and she was smiling at him. It was Noÿs as she had been, and his own heart beating as it had used to.”
“Finge went on. “There are some things, however, they must not know. Prime among them, of course, is the manner in which we alter Reality when necessary. The insecurity such knowledge would arouse would be most harmful. It is always necessary to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge and we have never been troubled with it.”
“Advertisement! A device for forcing the unwilling into line. Did it matter to a ground vehicle manufacturer whether a given individual felt an original or spontaneous desire for his product? If the prospect (that was the word) could be artificially persuaded or cajoled into feeling that desire and acting upon it, would that not be just as well?”
“Century or another. Usually, the dangerous beliefs are those which concentrate particularly in the ruling classes of an era; the classes that have most contact with us and, at the same time, carry the important weight of what is called public opinion.” Finge paused as though he expected Harlan to offer some comment or ask some question. Harlan did neither. Finge continued. “Ever since the Reality Change 433–486, Serial Number”
“He would do worse than his worst if he had to.”
“¡Los anuncios! Un procedimiento para atraer a los desinteresados. ¿Qué le importaba a un fabricante de vehículos terrestres si el deseo de un individuo desconocido hacia su producto era espontáneo o provocado? Si el cliente —esa era la palabra— podía ser artificialmente convencido o sugestionado para sentir tal deseo y actuar en consecuencia, ¿no era eso todo lo que le importaba al fabricante?”
“a moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite.”
“- ¿Quieres ver el libro que traigo? -dijo Harlan.
- ¿Es posible que lleves esos libros encima?
- ¿Por qué no? El viaje en la cabina lleva bastante tiempo. No hay ninguna necesidad de desperdiciarlo.”
“Harlan gazed at Noÿs and his thoughts wound tightly about her. What would she”
“Ne yazık ki, Sonsuzlukta bile şimdiki zaman geçip gidiyor.”
“did was to locate a member of the current aristocracy, who thought it would be thrilling or exciting to work in Eternity. I placed her in this office and kept her under close observation to see if she were suitable for our purpose—” Harlan thought: Close observation! Yes! Again his anger focused itself on Finge rather than upon the woman. Finge was still speaking. “By all standards, she is suitable. We will now return her to her Time. Using her dwelling as a base, you will be able to study the social life of her circle. Do”
“When one begins by expressing lack of competence in a given field, it usually implies that a flat opinion in that field will follow almost immediately”
“—¿No es desagradable la ostentación que esas gentes hacían de sus creaciones? ¿Quién puede ser tan estúpido como para creer a una persona que ensalza su propio producto? ¿Acaso va a confesar sus defectos? ¿Retrocederá ante cualquier exageración?”
“...being able to listen to unrepeatable secrets, wishes, and desires wasn't as wonderful as it seemed...being aware of what other people felt at every moment would come to cause him a lot of headaches, and huge disappointments in love.”
“Their wagon crawled along over gently rolling humps and swells, generally following the dusty valley floor between and around a maze of overlapping ridges. Thin pine and oak forests covered the lower slopes but never quite reached the red-rock ridgetops. Nor were there many trees down in the dry valleys of prairie grass and sage, where the occasional stunted, wind-rustled corn patch of a mestizo farm huddled against the road, or the mangy dogs of a native village ran out to pester the horses. But even in the afternoon when the road began to climb, winding through gaps in the craggy mountains toward the town of Arteaga, Caleb noted that it was a much better and smoother road than the one from Agua Nueva.”
“We’ll find a way,” I whispered. “I always do.”
Danaus leaned forward and brushed a kiss against my temple, sending a wave of peace deep
into the marrow of my bones, helping to ease some of the pain. “And then we’ll kill each other as
God intended.”
“We need a plan.” “Don’t die,” suggested Ryan. “We need a better plan.” “Don’t get seriously injured,” said Uncle Mike. I eyed him.”
“But if you could travel back through Time, and find yourself as you used to be, wouldn't you try, just once at least, to give her some kind of warning? Wouldn't you want to make things right?”
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