“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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“Letting my heart instead of my hormones decide when to do it made what Aiden and I'd done special. And when we passed each other throughout the day, the looks we stole suddenly meant more. Everything meant more, because we both were risking it all and neither of us regretted that.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, quote from Deity
“To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl;”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, quote from Wives and Daughters
“I lit a cigarette and began puffing on it as I drank one quick beer after another. I was neither a drinker nor a smoker nor a fighter, but I had planned to be all three on this day.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Lords of Discipline
“And the purple parted before it, snapping back like skin after a slash, and what it let out wasn't blood but light: amazing orange light that filled her heart and mind with a terrible mixture of joy, terror, and sorrow. No wonder she had repressed this memory all these years. It was too much. Far too much. The light seemed to give the fading air of evening a silken texture, and the cry of a bird struck her ear like a pebble made of glass. A cap of breeze filled her nostrils with a hundred exotic perfumes: frangipani, bougainvillea, dusty roses, and oh dear God, night-blooming cereus... And rising above one horizon came the orange mansion of the moon, bloated and burning cold, while the sun sank below the other, boiling in a crimson house of fire. She thought that mixture of furious light would kill her with its beauty.”
― Stephen King, quote from Lisey's Story
“What the matter, Zarek? You afraid to die? (Thanatos)
Dying’s easy. It’s living that’s hard. (Zarek)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Dance with the Devil
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Towards Zero
Who Fears Death
The Immigrants
On Heroes and Tombs
Buffering: Unshared...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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
