These are some quotations from the bigger file that I really like or find just plain strange or weird.

The truth? No, by nature man is more afraid of the truth than of death -- and that is perfectly natural: for the truth is even more repugnant than death to man's natural being. What wonder, then, that he is so afraid of it? . . . For man is a social animal -- only in the herd is he happy. It is all one to him whether it is the profoundest nonsense or the greatest villainy -- he feels completely at ease with it, so long as it is the view of the herd or the actions of the herd and he is able to join the herd.
- Soren Kierkegaard

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.
- Stalin

We have no rights, only responsibilities.
- Nicholas Monserrat, "The Time Before TThis"

The measure of a man's true character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
- T. Macaulay

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.
- Joan D Vinge, "Psion"

In love alone we hate to find
Companions to our woe.
- William Walsh

Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance.
For our weak vows we ask excessive prices.
Trusting the tears will wash away the sentence,
We sneak off where the muddy road entices.
- Baudelaire

. . . That is love! Before your heart expire,
Let the glory of God set it afire;
That is the true Delight which can not rot!"

Then the Angel, cruel as he was kind,
With giant hands twisted him till he whined;
But the damned soul still answered. "I will not!"
- Baudelaire

"Are you going to kill me?" said the child to the Dragon.
"Kill you?" The dragon smiled. "Certainly not until we have been introduced."
- Diane Duane

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
- Oliver Goldsmith

The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors.
- Henri Berque

There are no dumb question, only dumb people asking questions.
- Randy Cassingham

Many persons might have attained to wisdom had they not assumed that they already possessed it.
- Seneca

Optimism is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.
- Voltaire

It is perhaps one of life's most interesting ironies that, of the many who beseech the Goddess to send them love, so few will accept it when it comes, because it has come in what they consider the wrong shape, or the wrong size, or at the wrong time. Against our prejudices, even the Goddess strives in vain.
- Diane Duane

We see more clearly what others fail to do for us than what they actually do.
- Anonymous

The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed on the same scale.
- Aesop

Reality is no one's dream.
- Joan D Vinge, "Psion"

Whatever may be said of the Goddess, this much is certain: She enjoys a good joke. For proof of this, examine yourself or any other memeber of the human race closely -- and laugh along with her.
- Diane Duane

Memory is a mirror -- but even the clearest mirror reverses left to right.
- Diane Duane

No answer is also an answer.
- Danish Proverb

To reproach a man because his moral sense was corruptible was like blaming him for susceptibility to yellow fever.
- Dainel Boorstren

The more one comes to know man, the more one comes to admire the dog.
- Joussenal

Let's not be too critical of the tabacco industry. After all, it has found a cure for old age.
- Lloyd Clark

It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistaken, even absurd beleifs; so we may fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that the historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths.
- Herbert Huller

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.
- T. S. Elliot

There are no great men, only great circumstances with which ordinary men are forced to cope.
- Admiral Halsey

"I am an atheist, thank God!"
- Anonymous

Don't go through life thinking the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

A translator is a traitor.
- Italian Proverb

At times like this, I cannot affords to make enemies.
- reputedly said by Machiavelli on his ddeath bed when asked to abjure the Devil

For most people, the only one who sees into their soul is God. And most of us wish even God was a little nearsighted.
- Joan D Vinge

Men in general judge more from appearance than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of perception.
- Machiavelli

All that wisdom teaches us is that the ability to act is only the power to make things worse.
- Norman Spinrad, "Child of Fortune"
The five truths, terrible and joyous:

What is, is.
What was, is.
Matter is an illusion.
Meaning is an illusion.
The door opens both ways.
Believe none of these!
- Diane Duane

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your hearts desire. The other is to get it.
- George Bernard Shaw

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
- George Bernard Shaw

The trouble with people is not that they know so much, but that they know so much that ain't so.
- Henry Shaw (Josh Billings)

the heart is knit
by the pain that breaks it;

the life is made whole
by the death that starts it;

the death is made whole
by the life that ends it.
- Diane Duane

Chaos itself is the ultimate pinnacle upon which all order is recomplicated.
- Norman Spinrad, "Child of Fortune"
Only when the moment lapses and is gone, can it really be known. Thus the moment is everything, and nothing too.
- Ian Watson

I married beneath me. All women do.
- Lady Nancy Astor, first female MP in tthe United Kingdom

There is superstition in avoiding superstition.
- Frances Bacon

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

You will as soon get a fart out of a dead man.
- English Proverb

Therefore since the world has still
Much good but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
- A E Houseman

God help the poor for the rich can help themselves.
- English Proverb

Cats were put on earth to remind us that not everything has a purpose.
- Anonymous

Society prepares the crime and the criminal merely commits it.
- Mike Barr

Each individual is a part of society, and indeed he is that society.
- Mike Barr

To those who think that the law of gravity interferes with their freedom, there is nothing to say.
- Lionel Tiger

Man wants to live. But it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all of his actions.
- Anonymous

We carry in our very bones the minds of our forebears. No, a nation cannot separate itself from the past anymore than a river can separate itself from its source, or sap from the soil whence it arises. No generation is self-sufficient. it can, and does, happen that a generation forgets its history, or turns its back on it; such an act is a betrayal of history.
- Canan Groulx

Without any paradox I would boldly say that history is the most living of things and there is nothing more present than the past.
- Canan Groulx

The day the child realises that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent, the day he forgives them, be becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.
- Alden Nowlan

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
- Neitzsche

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.
- James Joyce

The picture of the loved,
Long we hold in our heart:
then come home to find
the two have grown apart:

Which to keep and which to kill:
Should there be a doubt?
But how we clip the dead to us
and throw the living out. . .
- Diane Duane

Not only is life a bitch, it has puppies.
- Adrienne E Gustoff

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get stuck in jet engines.
- John Renfield

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
- Voltaire

I expect woman will be the last thing civilised by man.
- George Meredith

He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.
- Harry Fosdick

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage
- Mark Russel

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. if you're alive, it isn't.
- Richard Bach

Oh, I don't blame congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too.
- Lichty and Wagner

Distance: the only thing the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionaarry"

If a mans notions of right and wrong have any other basis other than expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and nowise dependant upon, their consequences -- then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionaarry"

In the early days, all I hoped was to make a living out of what I did best. But, since there's no real market for masturbation, I had to fall back on my bass playing abilities.
- Les Claypool

Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who don't.
- Anonymous

When 25% of the population believe that the president should be impeached, and 51% believe in UFO's, you may or may not need a new president, but you definitely need a new population.
- Harry Reasoner

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has a limit. If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.
- Anonymous

If a dinosaur can become a hummingbird, all things are possible.
- Ronald Wright (speaking about Evolutiioon)

Ear of mankind
overgrown with nettles
would you hear?

If the voice of the prophets blew
on flutes made of murdered children's bones --
and exhaled airs burnt with
martyrs' cries --
if they built a bridge of old men's dying
groans --

Ear of mankind
occupied with small sounds
would you hear?
- Nelly Sachs, in "O the Chimneys"

The most difficult thing to predict is not the future but the past.
- Russian Proverb

In combat there is no sanity, only useful ways of being insane.
- Jack Cady

I think that we're all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better.
- Stephen King, "Danse Macabre"

If you believe, no proof is necessary; if you doubt, no proof is sufficient.
- Kenneth Woodward

Defeat will only make us dead, not honourable.
- Barbara Hambly

A man should go to jail for his beliefs at least once.
- Nicholas Monsarrat, "The Time Before TThis"

The first requisite of the genius is sheer ruthlessness.
- Brian Moore

Imagination is a quality given to a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour is provided to console him for what he is.
- Anonymous

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. The "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.
- Faulkner

It will be lonely to be dead, but it cannot be much more lonely that is it to be alive.
- Joan D Vinge, "Tin Soldier"

. . . if one always listened to the voice of reason, one would never do anything interesting.
- Zelazny and Sheckley

The bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also our enemies -- probably because they are generally the same people.
- Anonymous

Childhood is measured out by sound and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.
- John Betjemen

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
- Lillian Hellman

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends on whether you are at the right end of the wrong end of the gun.
- Anonymous

Treason doth never prosper: whats the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
- Sir John Harrington

Remember as you go through life that their are only two things worth knowing. The first is too complex for you to understand and the second is that life is an arbitrary series of often meaningless events, and the only way for you to make sense of life is to forget that you know this.
- George F Walker

"Doom" is the guys equivalent of "Chicken Soup for the Soul."
- Pat Brown

"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (to his orchestra)
The evil of man is that they like to be teachers of others.
- Mencius

Those who despise money end up sponging on their friends.
- Chang Chao

He who makes excuses accuses himself.
- French Proverb

I think it would be a good idea.
- Mahatma Ghandi (When asked what he thhoought of Western Civilisation)

"We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not," said the witch, "or die of despair."
- Phillip Pullman, "The Golden Compass""

I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
- Voltaire

It came to him that if you are the kind of person who turns over stones -- and most people learn not to early in life -- what comes crawling out can be disconcerting.
- Victor O'Reilly, "Games of the Hangmaann"

The distance is nothing. It is the first step that is difficult.
- Marquise de Deffand (concerning the lleegend that St Denis, carrying his head in his hands, walked two leagues)

There were too many people wanting to much in too small a space. Really, killing a few people was for the long term good. Mother mature needed some supporting firepower. He decided to give some money to Greenpeace, too. He had no desire to spend his retirement building up his radioactivity level so that he could read at night by the glow. besides, he liked whales.
- Victor O'Reilly, "Games of the Hangmaann"

There were two kinds of naiveté, one not even aware of the problems, and another which had knocked on all the doors of knowledge and knows man can explain little, and is willing to follow his convictions into the unknown.
- Schweitzer

" . . . if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem." . . .
:"I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who has the problem."
- Margaret Craven, "I Heard an Own Calll my Name"

There was pride in his eyes without arrogance. Behind the pride was a sadness do seep it seemed to stretch back to ancient mysteries Mark could not even imagine, and he felt a small thrill of fear, or anticipation, which a man knows if he's lucky enough to meet and recognise his challenge.
- Margaret Craven, "I Heard an Own Calll my Name"

He did not know that when he turned back in his own eyes was the depth of sadness which he had begun to understand.
- Margaret Craven, "I Heard an Own Calll my Name"

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridges to cross and which to burn.
- David Russel

Since I'm burning all by bridges, it would be nice to know which side of the river I'll end up on when the smoke clears.
- Tara K Harper, "Lightwing"

Do you cling to the little joys because you are afraid to taste the great ones, Jenny Waynest?
- Barbara Hambly, "Dragonsbane"

They said that dragons did not entrap with lies but with the truth, and she knew he had read accurately the desire of her soul.
- Barbara Hambly, "Dragonsbane"

What you feel is the love of humans, and that is a poor trade for the power that the touch of your mind gave me. It is what I first learned from John -- both the pain and the fact that to feel it is better than not to be able to feel.
- Barbara Hambly, "Dragonsbane"

We change what we touch, be it magic, power or another life.
- Barbara Hambly, "Dragonsbane"

Grief closed her throat, the grief of roads untaken, of doors not opened, or songs unsung -- the human grief of choice.
- Barbara Hambly, "Dragonsbane"

Having so little, we share among ourselves to make any of it worth having. We do what we do because the consequences of not caring enough to do it would be worse.
- Barbara Hambly, "Dragonsbane"

You do not know yourself; how then can I tell you things you may otherwise wish to know?
- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

I speak for the gods, the gods do not explain. You must explain for yourself. All is not what it seems; what things seem is not all. It is not the mirrors reflection that is real, but what it reflects. It is not the sword that slays, but the man behind it. It is not the wall that weakens, but those behind who do not repair it. The tree that stands in the forest reaches for the sunlight but cannot live without its roots. Temper your sword, Prince Elad. Nourish your roots. See beneath your mirror.
- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

O Time, your face his human.
O Death, your name is man.
O Humanity, reducing strong elements to dust, your name is blown on a tempest, you frighten the stars, you are ever young, but old, and ignorant as some force of nature.
- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

Trapped on earth, trapped by hope and memories, where is our answer, if not within ourselves?
- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

"I did not want this. Not this life -- not this pain. There is a limit to what humanity can endure."
"You'd think there must be."
- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
- Syndey J Harris

There is no god.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.
- Edna Milay

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
- Kelvin Throop III

The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others.
- Anonymous

If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides.
- Old Yiddish Proverb

Man will not be free until the last king has been strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
- Denis Diderot

If there was no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
- Voltaire

If their is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult that religion.
- Goncourt

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem that it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
- David Freidman

Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
- Albert Einstein

Language has created the world loneliness to express the pain of being alone and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
- Paul Tillich

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
- Herman Hesse

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a spark in the darkness of mere being.
- Carl Jung

The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed on him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.
- Mikhail Bakunin

Man is condemned to be free, because once thrown into this world, he is responsible for everything he does.
- Jean-Paul Satre

There is no reality except the one contained within me.
- Herman Hesse

People might die, but the world went on. One had to be philosophical. People killing each other was not globally threatening, like destroying the ozone layer. It was actually quite normal. But it was inconvenient for those involved.
- Victor O'Reilly, "Rules of the Hunt"<

My father was a politician and the son of a politician. This makes a joke of democracy but is not so unusual.
- Victor O'Reilly, "Rules of the Hunt"<

Seeing people get blown apart is a great stress reliever.
- J. David Caldwell

Then Hitler must have been under a lot of stress.
- Stacey Ste. Marie

Reality is perception. Perception change. Reality is fluid. So if by "reality" you mean reliably tangible objects and immutable events, then there's no such thing.
- Dean Koontz, 'Tick Tock"

Reason is not sufficient for the defence of reason.
- Max Harkheimer

I looked around and saw the sky all filled with dragons, dread squadrons come out of legend to fall upon a younger world.
- Angus Wells, "Lords of the Sky"

Love is learning to pay attention.
- Anonymous

To die, sweet Spencer, therefore live we all.
Spencer, all live to die and rise to fall.
- Christopher Marlowe

"What god," she snarled, suddenly vicious, "gives you the right to make me guilty of anothers crime?"
- Tara K Harper, "Cat Scratch Fever">
Too many of us, when we accomplish what we set out to do, we exclaim: "See what I have done!" instead of saying, "See where I have led."
- Henry Ford

There is no such thing as justice -- in or out of court.
- Clarence Darrow

BELIEVE IN THE LORD AND HE SHALL DELIVER.
- Paul Lindsay, "Code name: Gentkill"
DON'T CONFUSE GOD WITH DOMINO'S.
- Paul Lindsay, "Code name: Gentkill"
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.
- Denis Wholey

Never close a door until you've walked through it.
- Sam MacLeod

"If you have to ask," Ferrant said, "explaining it wouldn't help."
- Diane Duane

" . . . this also," said Marlowe suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
- Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness">
Somehow, the painting soothed him. It verified his fears. But it also informed him that fear was wonderful. It told him that there was nothing in the whole wide world of madness that was not the property of sanity as well.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
- G K Chesteron

To live and breathe is nothing . . . to want to live and breathe is everything.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
- H L Mencken

We are what we pretend to be, but we better be very careful what we pretend.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
- Ann Landers

Natives who beat drums to ward off evil are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
- Mary Kelly

The Europeans were able to conquer America, not because of their military genius, or their religious motivation, or their ambition, or their greed. They conquered it by waging unpremeditated biological warfare.
- Howard Simpson

"Who do you think is lying to us?" Shevek demanded.
Placid, Bedap met his gaze. "Who, brother? Who but ourselves?"
- Ursula Le Guin

Is winning or losing all you understand? Then I pity you. Whether or not you'll cede the point is quite moot. I charge you instead. Learn by what you saw and take fair warning.
- Janny Wurts

. . . shadow does not necessarily conceal evil; it merely conceals. This is a perception that goes beyond ordinary human understanding and spirituality.
- Katherine Kurtz

Olivia closed her eyes. "I thought you said something about human sensibilities," she said.
"I did," said Marlow. "Human -- not humane."
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

. . . a person possessed of reason must appear to be sane at all times.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

"You have failed to understand. It is not who are you? -- but are you?
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

Psychiatric case loads everywhere carried alarming numbers. Broken dreamers, their minds in ruin. This was the human race.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

There is little beauty left -- but much ugliness. Little wilderness -- but much emptiness. No explorers -- but many exploiters. There is no art -- no music -- no literature -- but only entertainment. And there is no philosophy. This that was once a living place for humankind has become their killing ground.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

We are lost, he was thinking, because we savour too keenly the brightness of the moment as it reflects upon our selves.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

Maybe I needed to get free of him. Of al he'd done for me, even when I didn't want him to do it. He has to stop doing things I can never pay him back for. Things no man should do for another, sacrifices no man should make for another man.
- Robin Hobb

It is quite one thing to admit a fault to yourself. It is another thing entirely to have a friend not only agree with you, but point out the full depth of the fault.
- Robin Hobb

"There is one thing in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attack to what gender one is."

"Well, it is important . . ." I began

"Rubbish!" He exclaimed. "Mere plumbing, when all is said and done. Why is it important?"
- Robin Hobb

Luck, Nightfall thought, is a matter of opinion.
- Mickey Reichert, 'The Legend of Nighttffall"

It was the most evil of men who generally believed themselves most good.
- Mickey Reichert, 'The Legend of Nighttffall"

The spaceport has been destroyed, or, to be more precise, it has been removed from a three dimensional context.
- Cheryl Franklin

My son, you will be surprised with how little wisdom the world is governed.
- Axel Oxenstein

Men not only kill the messenger who brings the bad news, but also the horse he rode on.
- Barbara Hambly

What the hell do you think businessmen are but gangsters with their bowels cut out of them?
- Barbara Hambly

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26, 911 words.
- David McIntosh

Marx understood what it meant to be human . . . to be flawed.

Marx thought he also understood how to end an eternity of human suffering and injustice: share what you could, keep only what you need. He never understood why the rest of humanity couldn't see the answer, when it was so obvious to him.

The truth was that they couldn't even see the problem.
- Joan D Vinge, "Dreamfall"

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing whats right.
- Issac Asimov

"So I know why people kill themselves."
"Okay." Orley tried to be diffident. "Tell me why, then."
"They do it because there's nowhere else to hide."
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

When I was born, the world wasn't like this.
Wasn't it?
No.
I suspect the world was always like this.
That's the problem.
Nothing changes?
No. It all gets worse.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
- Joseph Conrad

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
- Hellen Keller

"No one believes that its a dead-end street," said Fabiana. "The signs all say so -- but no one believes."
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

What did the Yellow Book Guide tell you? Not to touch without rubber gloves. They had said that, too, about AIDS -- and had been wrong. Don't touch. Don't move. Don't breathe. They might as well have said: be dead and be doe with it.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

"It is not wrong to love," he said. So long as you know what love is.
- Timothy Findley, "Headhunter"

Brains are to you what feathers are to a frog.
- Sam MacLeod

What passes for identity in America is a series of crimes about one's heroic ancestors.
- James Baldwin

"I never thought before," said Tirrin, unruffled, "of the fact that there are people on a hill, up there, on Urras, looking at Anarres, at us, and saying, "Look, there's our Moon." Our earth is their Moon, our Moon is their earth."
"Where, then, is Truth?" declaimed Bedap, and yawned.
"In the hill one happens to be sitting on," said Tirrin.
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"
You can go home again . . . so long as you understand that home is a place you have never been.
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed">
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
- E F Schumacher

Why do you heckle me? For all you know, I'm your father.
- Jack White

"Who ordered that?"
- I I Rabi, when told about the muon, aa wholly unexpected new subatomic particle

A good astronomical theorist never lets the complete absence of information stand in the way of a nice theory and, conversely, never gets thrown when an actual observation arrives to spoil it.
- Sam Flamsteed

But days come when religion is not worth anything unless it is worth everything, days when only things which cannot be remain unshaken.
- John Oman, During World War I

If there's anything I've learned, living with humans, it's never to underestimate the power of greed.
- Joan D Vinge, "Dreamfall"

To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
- W H Auden

We all meet our masters, all of us -- why do you think we are in this world?
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

Yes, I was drunk -- though not nearly drunk enough by my reckoning -- and yes, I was adrift between old, old aches and furies, as I had not been for some time. But I do not love out of pain, and I do not desire out of need or fear, no matter how far off my course I am.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

I survived. I do not know if that is the same thing as not dying.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

But who comes when no one calls?
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

"You destroyed my home," Arshadins empty voice said. "I have not forgotten."
"You have apparently forgotten that when I asked you to let me leave, flames leaped from the walls and great fanged pits opened in the floor. I regarded that as childish and ungracious, in addition to doing your woodwork no good. I said so at the time."
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

There should always be a moon, just a little piece, so you can find your way between things.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

Perhaps we are all, even Wizards, no more than the faded sketches of the good we contain, the evil we might have done . . .
- Peter S Beagle, "The Innkeeper's Songg""

Why should so many evils be necessary?
- Crawford Killian

As for violence, well, I don't know, Ollie: would you murder me, ordinarily? And if you felt like it, would a law against it stop you? Coercion is the least effective means of obtaining order.
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"
Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilisation does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words.
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"
All you have to do to see life whole is to see it mortal. I'll die, you'll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"
. . . he now understood why the army was organised as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organisation would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed women and children easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in.
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"
The best advice I can offer is that you seek it form someone wiser than I.
- Crawford Killian

"Kindness. In this world of cruelty?"
"Yes, kindness because it is a world of cruelty.
- Crawford Killian

I have about as much faith in the medical profession as I do in God.
- Scott O'Hara

. . . a closet, even the slightest of closets, is the most high-maintenance structure there is.
- Scott O'Hara

Oh, my friend, its not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.
- Hubert Humphrey

"I no longer think you mad, though I begin to wonder about myself."
"The birth of wisdom."
- Will Shetterly, "Why Cats Have No Lorrdd"

. . . he's got to be himself until he dies, which is a worse punishment than anything you could do to him.
- Dean Koontz

"I retain a few scruples."
"Really?"
"Well, mostly to amuse myself, I'll admit."
- Will Shetterly, "Why Cats Have No Lorrdd"

"I'm always sure."
"That must be very nice for you."
. . . "I'm just not always right."
- Will Shetterly, "Why Cats Have No Lorrdd"

Never apologise, young man. If you have will enough to know what you did was wrong, you have will enough to do otherwise.
- Will Shetterly, "Why Cats Have No Lorrdd"

"You've power."
"So does a river. Still, humans master it, not it humans."
- Will Shetterly, "Why Cats Have No Lorrdd"

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
- Alfred Alder

I am not in this world to live up to other peoples expectations, nor do I expect the world to live up to my own.
- Unknown

Honour isn't about making the right choices, it's about dealing with the consequences.
- Midori Cato

Democracy is the process by which the people are free to choose the man who will take the blame.
- Lawrence Peter

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
- James Feibleman

For the sceptic, there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman efficiency.
- Eric Ambler

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.
- Ayn Rand

A viler evil that to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in of his own free will, and that he build the furnace, besides.
- Ayn Rand

It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings . . .
- Ayn Rand

If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarised to man, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.
- Woodsworth

What terrified me will terrify others. I need only describe the spectre which has haunted my midnight pillow.
- Mary Shelley, on Frankenstein

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away.
- Philip K Dick

That which makes no sense makes the most sense.
- Philip K Dick

Faith shaken by the discovery that the entity believed in actually existed -- the paradox of piety.
- Philip K Dick

Opinion has it that cats can see things that are invisible to human eyes, Well, this isn't true. Half the time cats are simply looking in the wrong direction.
- Ian Watson

The real and the true could only be seized in a laugh, a laugh that would rattle the stars.
- Ian Watson

A person who can offer things is an oppressor, lady.
- Ian Watson

It makes them angry, but . . .courage is a figment of mens imaginations. Most bold men are merely unafraid, which is another thing entirely.
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

Inaction . .. is action enough.
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

"Courage is for people who think they've got something to lose."
The Kappelmeister said, "Perhaps you've got more than you realise, Gaetan du Cheyne."
More what? More courage, or merely more to lose?
Why don't I know?
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

"The remarkable thing is not what a talking dog says, Gaetan, but that it speaks at all."
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

In a world where people ate only rocks, would there be anguished souls who suffered over the ignoble fate of stones?
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

How does it feel to be bargaining with the devil?
For that matter, how does it feel to be the devil with whom the downtrodden must bargain?
Now I know.
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

"I don't feel like a hero."
"Real heroes never do."
- William Barton, "Acts of Conscience"<

For a human being, nothing comes naturally.
- Philip Pullman

Humanity as a whole is not a very rational species, even at its best.
- Cheryl Franklin

"You know, I don't regret knowing him. He made me who I am, and how can I regret being me?"
- Clive Barker, "Sacrament"

How many times would he have to waken, before he was as conscious as a man could be? A dozen? A hundred? Or did it go on forever, this rousing of the spirit, the skins of his slumbers stripped away, only to uncover another dream, and another?
- Clive Barker, "Sacrament"

"We're at the end, and nothing that went before seems of any consequence."
- Clive Barker, "Sacrament"

"Everything is consumed, Will, sooner or later. Living and dying we feed the fire."
- Clive Barker, "Sacrament"

"Do not fabricate, Marrach. Listening to you is not a pressing commitment on my part. Explain yourself succinctly, before you exhaust my limited curiosity."
"Nilson."
The ensuing pause was long enough to assure Marrach of Caragen's displeased surprise. "Brevity is a virtue, but excess is absurd."
- Cheryl J Franklin

"Do not try to answer a question that offers only a false choice."
- Cheryl J Franklin

To those who feel, the world is a tragedy. To those who think, the world is a comedy.
- Unknown

"Leave it rest. I am here, and not unhappy, and I am afraid to try for more light lest it mean more dark."
- Guy Gavriel Kay, "The Fionavar Tapesttrry"

"Only thus are we not slaves: if we can choose where we would walk. Failing that, all is mockery."
- Guy Gavriel Kay, "The Fionavar Tapesttrry"

"I have come this far and done this much. I will do no further on this path. There is a point beyond which the quest for the Light becomes a serving of the Dark."
- Guy Gavriel Kay, "The Fionavar Tapesttrry"

He was a strong man, to be sure, and brave in the way that the strong can afford to be brave.
- C S Friedman, "Black Sun Rising"

"And I love you," she whispered back. "I always have." She shut her eyes tightly; a tear squeezed out of the corner of one of them. "I only wish that was enough to base a marriage on, Zen. But it isn't. Can't you see that?"
- C S Friedman, "Black Sun Rising"

"Sometimes, I think we are responsible for our defeat. When we play by the rules of the enemy, we inherit his weaknesses."
- C S Friedman, "Black Sun Rising"

"We're none of us as rational as we'd like to be."
- C S Friedman, "Black Sun Rising"

"So many of these things have no words, because we never have a need to describe them. The world is. The rahk are. That is enough for us."
"Humans struggle all their lives to achieve such acceptance," he mused. "And rarely succeed."
"I know. When I'm not filled with fury at their destructiveness -- or amazement at their stupidity -- I sometimes feel sorry for them."
- C S Friedman

Names are magic, names are all the magic there is . . .
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

Me, I really don't want to know all this stuff, whether the universe runs on premium or unleaded.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

It is harder to release a nation from servitude than to enslave a free nation.
- Simon Bolivar

"Is there so little to fear in this world that you have to make enemies out of your neighbours?"
- C S Friedman

"Does your god have nothing better to do than pass judgement on the innocent?"
- C S Friedman

Faith was a fantasy, a delusion. Faith was like wine; you poured it inside you and for a brief time it blossomed, it eased the pain of living, it banished the built that tended to clog up a mans head. And then it was gone, like wine; digested, expelled, forgotten. What was the point?
- C S Friedman

It is not so much the fact that everyone has a gun -- its that everyone want to be one.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

"The point is that thing you keep missing, the point is power. Power doesn't need to explain itself, power is not about explaining. Power just does because it can."
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

For every action, an equal and opposite reaction -- that is true for gods and demons as well as rocket ships. If you bend the universe the wrong way -- which is what you would call a miracle -- and you lose your hold, the universe snaps back at you, you get something you did not ask for.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

"That was no miracle, that was only fear. It is the easiest thing in the world to make human beings afraid -- none of us could ever resist it. But no one can make the universe afraid."
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

You ever want to see real witchcraft, you watch people protecting their comforts, their beliefs. Thats were it is.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

Well, with power it is the same for everyone -- if you don't quite want it enough, it just leaves you, Power always knows, you see. And gods always lose their power, because we lose our pleasure in it, we all come to want other things, sooner or later. This is where we are different from human beings.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

There is nothing like you [humanity] anywhere among all the stars of the sky, do you realise that? You are the wonder of the cosmos, possibly for embarrassing reasons, but always a wonder.
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air""<

Men see life going from a dark to darkness. The gods see life as a death.
- Katharine Kerr

But there were thousands of the enemy, and where hundreds failed, thousands ultimately succeeded.
- Terry Brooks

It was an unavoidable part of war, that men should die for unknown reasons . . .
- Terry Brooks

They feel helpless to effect even the smallest change. Their madness is of their own making, yet they are powerless against it because they refuse to acknowledge its source. They are at war with themselves, but they do not understand the nature of the battle being fought.
- Terry Brooks, "Running with the Demonn""

But for as much as he might appear otherwise, he was a knight, the best that the people were going to get and perhaps better than they deserved.
- Terry Brooks, "Running with the Demonn""

"Do even a handful among your people believe that life in this country is better than it was twenty years ago?"
- Terry Brooks, "Running with the Demonn""

To see something you must cease to be it.
- Carolyn Gilman, "Halfway Human"

That's what self-knowledge is all about, exposure of those things you least want to know. We can never really know ourselves until we know shame.
- Carolyn Gilman, "Halfway Human"

I became very interested in religion. The truth was, I desperately needed something to take me out of myself . . . I needed something to give me a nobler persona, whose eyes I could look through -- so I could face the world thinking, it's not just me inside here; its someone else, more worthwhile than me. Otherwise, I might have perished in self-awareness.
- Carolyn Gilman, "Halfway Human"

All humans are unique. Each of us has his or her own blend of abilities, deficits, and moral strengths. To say we are equal is degrading, as if we were no more than mass produced machines, interchangeable parts.
- Carolyn Gilman, "Halfway Human"

"You can't imagine what it feels like to have no power, no power at all. I have no way to get anything but through humans. You are the ones who cause all things to happen. All of the rest of us -- plants, animals, whole planets -- we are just objects you humans batter around like some cosmic sport, using us in your competition to get ahead. We have no choice about where you're going to hit us, which direction our lives will ricochet -- unless somehow we learn a way into your hearts. Its not a game for us, its survival. It's how we must evolve. You're our natural selection."
- Carolyn Gilman, "Halfway Human"

"It's so strange. I feel as if I don't have any notion of who I am, or even what I am. I half think I might meet myself on a street corner someday, and not even recognise me."
"Welcome to humanity," Val said.
- Carolyn Gilman, "Halfway Human"

Loyalty is the only virtue I possess. Kindly stop throwing it back in my face.
- P C Hodgell

Ignorance goes a long way towards protecting honour.
- P C Hodgell

I'm no more apt to lie than you are, but there are a hundred ways to hide the truth.
- P C Hodgell

Violence is never the answer but, sometimes, like with cockroaches, it's the only possible solution.
- Tanya Huff

He realised that nothing he said in turn could convince the other man that another world existed outside -- or more frighteningly, inside -- the boundaries he'd lived with all his life.
- Tanya Huff

The best lie isn't a lie at all.
- Tanya Huff

But often when I see myself
In moments quiet, deep,
Or in a mornings awakening
From dream-invaded sleep,
I know myself just as I am,
The child of long ago,
And all the fears of all the years
Are with me. This is so.
And I am too helpless and to weak
To conquer life and me;
Is being my frail, naked self
To be my destiny?
- Jane Browell, from "I am"

I cannot breathe to save your breath,
And pain cannot be shared.
What have I ever given you
To show how much I cared?
Only a hope, a longing love,
A kiss and a sad prayer.
So much, no more I offer you
Tis all I can or dare.
- Jane Browell, from "The tragedy of Loovve"

But to forgive is not forget,
Though wonds have lost their pain.
I must bear shields against more stabs
Or suffer them again.
Not innocent, but wiser now,
Yet free of angers chains,
I find life's pattern clear and bright
Since only love remains.
- Jane Browell, from "Unshackled"

I think the danger is not so much in asking the 'why' as in believing you have come up with the only answer.
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, "Thee Death Gate Cycle"

"His essence -- our soul, as you call it -- is trapped inside the dog. Inside the body of a dumb animal."
""Some might say we're all trapped that way."
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, "Thee Death Gate Cycle"

Is it wrong to refuse to answer a question to which I don't know the answer?
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, "Thee Death Gate Cycle"

It is death that gives life meaning. Death, the great equaliser. Man, woman, peasant, king, rich, poor: all of us fellow travellers to our journey's end. Life is sacred, precious, a thing to cherish, not to be taken lightly. You have lost all respect for death and thereby all respect for life.
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, "Thee Death Gate Cycle"

"We wander on a darkling plain, beset by ignorance and confusion."
"Thanks for summing up the whole condition of humankind."
- Christopher Stassheff

Some dreams drifted too close to reality, and some realities too close to dream.
- Alan Dean Foster, "Carnivores of Lighhtt and Darkness"

"How about it, bruther cat? What do you think?"
Their feline companion shrugged, his ebony mane twitching as he did so. "Why put it to me? I am only a quadrupedal carnivore of comingled ancestry. Aren't humans the ones who are supposed to have big brains? That's what you're always saying, anyway. Or are you experiencing second thoughts about your own cerebral propaganda?"
- Alan Dean Foster, "Carnivores of Lighhtt and Darkness"

Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
- Charlotte Whitton

There are certain diseases I fear, Etjole. Among them are the chills and fevers a mosquito brings, the swelling of limbs one gets from an infestation of certain worms, the closure of the bowels, the clap, the spotted death, leprosy, and altruism. I count the last among the most deadly.
- Alan Dean Foster, "Carnivores of Lighhtt and Darkness"

I only want to discharge my obligation and return as quickly as possible to my family and to my village. That is what is important to me. That is what I have built my life around. Not abstract notions of what may be considered acceptable behaviour among those I do not care for and do not know.
- Alan Dean Foster, "Carnivores of Lighhtt and Darkness"

She learned what everyone learns in war. Living through it is all that matters.
- Mary Doria Russel, "The Sparrow"

We are what we fear in others.
- Mary Doria Russel, "The Sparrow"

"You've seen what " Emilio conceded, "But not why! That's where God is, Anne. In the why of it -- in the meaning.
- Mary Doria Russel, "The Sparrow"

"They're idealists, unfortunately."
. . . "So? My lord, there are worse crimes"
"No, there are not."
- Daniel Keys Moran, "The Ring"

If you can't share the reality, there are worse things than having someone to share the masks.
- Tanya Huff

One half of the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have of changing others.
- Jacob Braude

I have two convictions. First, more harm has been done by weak persons than by wicked persons, secondly, the problems of this world are caused by the weakness of goodness rather than by the strength of evil. It is evident that we have allowed technology to outstrip social controls . . . Man must catch up with what he has created.
- Harry S Kennedy

If there was no God, there would be no atheists.
- G K Chesteron

"You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?"
"No -- "
"To exhibit the perfect weakness of knowing the answer to the wrong question."
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainy: not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"

To oppose something is to maintain it.
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"

To learn what questions are unanswerable and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time . . .
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"

To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his non-existence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof.
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"

It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and the cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.
- Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of DDaarkness"