The Dying Earth

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

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.

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.

T’sain shrugged. “I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life.

It is thus because it has always been thus. Is not this reason enough?

My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.

A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength.

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.

You are evil like all existence. ... If power were mine I would crush the universe to bloody gravel and stamp into the ultimate muck!

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.

T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.

I hate you with the hate that I give to all the world; I love you with a feeling nothing else arouses.