Jack Vance: Trending quotes

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Jack Vance: 426 quotes3 likes

“Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 11, section 3 (p. 538)

“The crime,” said the Jacynth softly, “is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.”

Jack Vance book To Live Forever

Source: To Live Forever (1956), Chapter XI, section 2

“Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 14 (p. 162)

““We are supposed to set you a good example,” said Devonet. “As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree.”
“Then I am a lady of refinement well and truly,” said Madouc, “since I did not wish to be found.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 3, section 1 (p. 718)

“Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.”

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 5

“Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

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

““It sees that you are wrong, that you are guided by faith indeed.”
The Demie fell silent. His face seemed to stiffen.
“Are these not facts?” asked Joaz. “How do you reconcile them with your faith?
The Demie said mildly, “Facts can never be reconciled with faith.””

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

Section 7
The Dragon Masters (1962)

“The merchant voiced an inarticulate protest. Glystra glared at him, “Do you think I trust you?”
“Trust?” said the merchant with a puzzled expression. “Trust? What word is that?” And he tested it several times more.”

Jack Vance book Big Planet

Source: Big Planet (1957), Chapter 16 “The Search” (p. 167)

“Speaking our language, you will understand us—and if you can think as another man thinks, you cannot dislike him.”

Jack Vance book The Languages of Pao

Source: The Languages of Pao (1958), Chapter 8 (p. 64)

“I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 10 (p. 111)

“The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 3 (p. 23)

“The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.”

Jack Vance book To Live Forever

Source: To Live Forever (1956), Chapter XI, section 1

“You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 3, section 2 (p. 394)

“Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 7 (p. 83)

“And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 2, "Cil"

“Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary.”

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 9

“Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"Not in every aspect," said Cugel.
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

“Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth—and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort…. We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolute—is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Killing Machine (1964), Chapter 3 (p. 179)

“And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?”

Jack Vance book Space Opera

Source: Space Opera (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 65)

“"Llorio, you are a woman of surpassing beauty, though you would seem to lack that provocative warmth which draws man to woman, and adds dimension to the character."
The Murthe responded curtly: "The quality you describe is a kind of lewd obsequiousness which, happily, has now become obsolete. As for the 'surpassing beauty,' it is an apotheotic quality generated by the surging music of the female soul, which you, in your crassness, perceive only as a set of pleasing contours."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"The Murthe", chapter 3
Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)