“Living creatures, if nothing else, have the right to life. It is their only truly precious possession, and the stealing of life is a wicked theft”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“What great minds lie in the dust,” said Guyal in a low voice. “What gorgeous souls have vanished into the buried ages; what marvellous creatures are lost past the remotest memory … Nevermore will there be the like; now in the last fleeting moments, humanity festers rich as rotten fruit. Rather than master and overpower our world, our highest aim is to cheat it through sorcery.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“But even in my life I saw the leaching of spirit. A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength. Light, warmth, food, water, were free to all men, and gained by a minimum of effort. So the people of Ampridatvir, released from toil, gave increasing attention to faddishness, perversity, and the occult.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“T’sain shrugged. “I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“It is thus because it has always been thus. Is not this reason enough?”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“Death is the heritage of life; a man’s vitality is like air in a bladder. Poinct this bubble and away, away, away, flees life, like the color of fading dream.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“You are evil like all existence. ... If power were mine I would crush the universe to bloody gravel and stamp into the ultimate muck!”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“An enemy, perhaps. Ah, so simple. Liane will kill you ten men. Two steps forward, thrust — thus!” He lunged. “And souls go thrilling up like bubbles in a beaker of mead.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
“I hate you with the hate that I give to all the world; I love you with a feeling nothing else arouses.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
Jack Vance
Born place: in San Francisco, California, The United States
Born date August 28, 1916
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“Pearls have such a magic that they suit every one.’ ‘They would uncommonly suit you,’ he frankly returned. ‘Oh yes, I see myself!”
― Henry James, quote from The Wings of the Dove
“I just want you to know, before I make my promises, that I'm super stubborn. You already know I'm hard to live with, and you've made it clear on dozens of occasions that I drive you crazy. And I'm sure I've driven anyone who's watched these last few months crazy with my indecision and uncertainty. But I want you to know that whatever love is, this has got to be it. We were best friends first, and we tried not to fall in love, and we did anyway. If you're not with me, it's not where I want to be. I'm in this. I'm with you. We might be impulsive, and absolutely insane to be standing here at our age, six months after we met.
This whole thing might play out to be a completely wonderful, beautiful disaster, but I want that if it's with you.”
― Jamie McGuire, quote from A Beautiful Wedding
“Human beings are just machines, Petra knew that, machines that do what you want them to do, if you only know the levers to pull. And no matter how complex people might seem, if you just cut them off from the network of people who give shape to their personality, the communities that form their identity, they'll be reduced to that set of levers. Doesn't matter how hard they resist, or how well they know they're being manipulated. Eventually, if you take the time, you can play the like a piano, every note right where you expect it.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Hegemon
“I’ve chosen my life — now I want to start living it.”
― Stephenie Meyer, quote from The Twilight Saga
“But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Notes from Underground
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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