Quotes from work
Demon Princes

Jack Vance

Demon Princes is a series of five science fiction novels by Jack Vance, which cumulatively relate the story of one Kirth Gersen as he exacts his revenge on five notorious criminals, collectively known as the Demon Princes, who carried the people of his village off into slavery during his childhood. Each novel deals with his pursuit of one of the five Princes.

“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)

“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)

“Discipline in itself is not a corrupt concept, only discipline that is imposed rather than self-calculated.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Book of Dreams (1981), Chapter 14 (p. 347)

“Urbanized men and women experience not life but the abstraction of life, on ever higher levels of refinement and dislocation from reality. They become processors of ideas, and have evolved such esoteric occupations as the critic, the critic who criticizes criticism, and even the critic who criticizes criticism of criticism. It is a very sad misuse of human talent and energy.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Book of Dreams (1981), Chapter 7 (p. 264)

“May I inquire as to your motives?”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

“Why do you trouble to ask? You would believe nothing told you.”
Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 13 (p. 166)

“The seconds marched past, traversing that mysterious boundary which separates future from past.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 11 (p. 145)

“For many years my nerves were like electric wires. Then I discovered the first axiom of human accord: I accept each person on his own terms. I keep a close tongue in my head; I offer opinions only when so solicited. What a remarkable change! Dissension vanishes, novel facts emerge, digestion flows like a wide river.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 7 (pp. 75-76)

“I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

“My great pleasure is creation—of this I never tire. Some of my guests have complained of a gentle melancholy which hangs in the air; I agree that the mood exists. The explanation, I believe, arises from the fugacity of beauty, the tragic pavanne to which all of us step.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 12 (p. 415)

“Candor is never indiscreet. Truth, which is to say, the reflection of life, is beautiful.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 9 (p. 381)

“Art implies discipline; the more excellent the art, the more rigorous the discipline.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 7 (p. 356)

“I am an unhappy man. I am haunted by my inability to express the inexpressible, to come to terms with the unknown. The pursuit of beauty is, of course, a major psychological drive. It its various guises—which is to say, the urge to perfection, the yearning to merge with the eternal, the explorer’s restlessness, the realization of an Absolute created by ourselves, yet larger than our totality—it is perhaps the most important human thrust.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 6 (p. 346)

“There is too much knowledge already in the world; we use facts as crutches, to the impoverishment of our senses. Facts are falsehoods; logic is deceit. I know a single system of communication: the declaiming of poetry.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 5 (p. 343)

“I have much to say about the world, but every year the compulsion dwindles. Let them live and die; it is all one to me.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 5 (p. 342)

“The central problem, so it seemed, was to learn from whose eye he looked forth. Much, after all, would depend upon his viewpoint.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Killing Machine (1964), Chapter 12 (p. 282)

“A detached attitude toward the problems of others is not illegal.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Killing Machine (1964), Chapter 3 (p. 180)

“Destiny could not bring him this far only to deal him failure!”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 10 (p. 122)

“Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 8 (p. 83)

“The tighter the discipline of an art form, the more subjective the criteria of taste.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 7 (p. 79)

“There are also those who, like the author, ensconce themselves on a thunderous crag of omniscience, and with protestations of humility which are either unconvincing or totally absent, assume the obligation of appraisal, commendation, derogation or denunciation of their contemporaries. Still, by and large it is an easier job than digging a ditch.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 6 (p. 59)

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