Michael Shea: Use

Michael Shea was writer. Explore interesting quotes on use.
Michael Shea: 80   quotes 0   likes

“We’re none of us more than wisps of desire and imagining! What man is not, at the center of his mind, a ghostly wish-to-be haunting the jerry-built habitation of his imperfect acts? Haunting the maze of what-has-been?”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 11 (p. 171)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Imagination

““You realize of course, Barnar, that it is simply not possible that we’re actually doing this?”
“I’ve come to the same comforting conclusion, old friend. Therefore let’s away—an impossibility can only do us an unreal sort of harm, after all.””

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 139)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 19 (p. 226)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Freedom

“It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be…infuriating.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue, “Shag Margold’s Eulogy of Nifft the Lean, His Dear Friend” (p. 5; ellipsis in the original)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Knowledge , Heart

“Present action, though futile, is preferable to passive acceptance of such a fate as awaits us.”

Michael Shea

Source: A Quest for Simbilis (1974), Chapter 6, “The House on the River” (p. 112)

Fate

“I have in mind the notion that is so fashionable nowadays, namely that we live in a Dark Age where puny Science quails before many a dim Unknown on every hand. Surely this sort of facile pessimism dampens the energy of inquiry even as it leads to obscurantism—toward a despair of certainty which encourages us to embrace truths, half-truths, and the most extravagant falsehoods with a promiscuous lack of discrimination.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (pp. 8-9)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Truth , Age , Fashion , Science

“We all thought you such a daring romantic then, and so outspoken about all us more conventional souls! Remember what you used to say about the world of business? All toadying and chicanery, lean purses fawning on fat ones for favors? Were those not the days? How far we wander from our youthful views!”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 1, Chapter 3 (p. 32)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Youth , World , Soul , Business

“While it is foolish to deny the dark around us, it is futile to exaggerate it.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (p. 8)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Granting that our knowledge be limited, what can it profit us to traffic in lurid fantasies and errant imaginings? When—certainty failing us—we must speculate, let us recognize the difference between careful enumeration of reasonable hypotheses, and the reckless multiplication of bizarre conceptions.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (p. 9)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Imagination , Knowledge