Jack Vance: Trending quotes

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Jack Vance: 426 quotes3 likes

“Kings, like children, tend to be opportunistic. Generosity only spoils them. They equate affability with weakness and hasten to exploit it.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 12, section 2 (p. 122)

““Tomorrow?”
“Sh.” She put her hand across his lips. “Never say the word!””

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 12

““I learned a great deal,” said Beran. “And then I lost all heart for further learning.”
Palafox’s eyes glinted. “Education is not achieved through the heart—it is a systematization of the mental processes.”
“But I am something other than a mental process,” said Beran. “I am a man. I must reckon with the whole of myself.””

Jack Vance book The Languages of Pao

Source: The Languages of Pao (1958), Chapter 13 (p. 133)

“I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 5, section 3 (p. 430)

“Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

“Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of the nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"Morreion", chapter 8
Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

“I may be called upon to address the company. No one will listen, of course, which is just as well, since I have nothing to say.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 10, section 3 (p. 954)

“"I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?"
Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 2, section 2, "Lausicaa"

“Kergan Banbeck threw up his hands, turned once more to the sacerdote. “How can I halt his nonsense? How can I make him see reason?
The sacerdote reflected. “He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own.””

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

Section 2
The Dragon Masters (1962)

“I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call an absurd set of contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work; they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? That is my other secret.”

Jack Vance

Section 3 (p. 169)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)

“It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 2, section 3, "The Ocean of Sighs"

“Gassoon, for all his lore, subscribed to a common fallacy: he assumed that all those whom he encountered appraised him in the same terms as he did himself.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 7 (p. 81)

““Tell me, then! What is so important?”
“Your life! I could not bear that you should lose it!”
“I feel much the same. Say on.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 10, section 2 (p. 948)

“A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.”

Jack Vance book Big Planet

Source: Big Planet (1957), Chapter 3 “Free for All” (p. 31)

“Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.”

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

Section 6
The Dragon Masters (1962)

“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.”

Jack Vance book The Book of Dreams

Quotations and text from the Demon Princes novels, The Book of Dreams

“If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 3 (pp. 17-18)

“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.”

Jack Vance book The Five Gold Bands

Source: The Five Gold Bands (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 131)

“I fear, Master Zamp, that you are a victim to your own perfervid imagination.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 11 (p. 123)

“The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"