Philip José Farmer: Trending quotes

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Philip José Farmer: 104 quotes1 like

“Dullard: Someone who looks up a thing in the encyclopedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book.”

Philip José Farmer

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

Philip José Farmer book Venus on the Half-Shell

Venus on the Half-Shell (December 1974); written using the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, with the permission of Kurt Vonnegut.

“Can imagination act
Perpendicular to fact?
Can it be a kite that flies
Till the Earth, umbrella-wise,
Folds and drops away from sight?”

Philip José Farmer

"Imagination" in America Sings (1949); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

“And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed angel], represents a new [[hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears.”

Philip José Farmer book Riders of the Purple Wage

Of Chib
Riders of the Purple Wage (1967)

“Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night.”

Philip José Farmer

"In Common" in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

“By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic.”

Philip José Farmer

Message of "The Visitor" Ch. 19
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

“In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 4)

“Now we have lit a candle to the power
Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light
Itself…”

Philip José Farmer

Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)

“Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.”

Philip José Farmer

First lines.
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

“The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights.”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (pp. 5-6)

“Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.”

Philip José Farmer

First line, spoken by Sam Clemens.
The Riverworld series, The Fabulous Riverboat (1971)

“His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.
He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 1; First lines, depicting the death of Sir Richard Francis Burton).

“Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts.”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 23 (p. 172)

“"Call me Meier," Goring said, but he did not pause to explain the joke.”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980), Ch. 19

“The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side.
The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity.”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 3)

“Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age
Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.”

Philip José Farmer

"Beauty in This Iron Age" in Starlanes #11 (Fall 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

“This is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all. It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two essences. One is matter, the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.”

Philip José Farmer

Source: The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980), Ch. 19

“Let those who think the soul is shallow rail,
They must be warned before they dare to leap
They'll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep
In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail.”

Philip José Farmer

"Job's Leviathan" in JD Argassy #58 (1961); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

“God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth
In our fingers, give us power, give us light
To hold all love within our breast's small space.”

Philip José Farmer

Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)

“Dreams haunted The Riverworld.”

Philip José Farmer

First lines.
The Riverworld series, The Dark Design (1977)