Seth Messenger : Jack Vance's quotes

Jack Vance said :

(Automatic translation)
Jack Vance
(Quotes)
#42472
Each language is a special tool, endowed with a special faculty. More than a means of communication, it is a system of thought.

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42473
Any group, regardless of the number and homogeneity of the individuals who compose it or the firmness with which they profess a common doctrine, soon split into smaller groups espousing different versions of the same faith; these subgroups in turn arise from subgroups, and so on to the ultimate limit of the single individual, in which, moreover, opposite tendencies will be expressed.

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42474
But we don't know much; we are women.

Jack Vance
(The Giant Planet)


#42475
Didn't the many decisive turning points in the history of civilizations, the great changes that had shaken the foundations of well-established customs, originate from some insignificant incident- a fortuitously skilled man, a transient negligence, a relaxation or a failure of the authorities at the crucial moment?

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42476
Experience, my dear lady, has taught me a sad truth: time flows only in one direction! With each passing day, none of us gets any younger. We sometimes put off beautiful projects to finally discover that they are never materialized. Time is a thief of life!

Jack Vance
(Stopovers in the stars)


#42477
Everyone dies, one day or another. If we speak of quality, a thousand tyings are worth no more than one. Emotion varies on a single scale, that of intensity, not quantity.

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42478
I realized that if I wrote to make myself happy and have fun, instead of trying to please publishers, the novels were only better.

Jack Vance
(Source inconnue)


#42479
Training will never replace the desire to fight.

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42480
Thirty of Pao's most charming women, ready to satisfy your whims. Palafox casually replies: "Once slit and buried, they could make an acceptable fertilizer. I don't know what other use I could use. »

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42482
Even today, many classify space travel with astrology and Easter bells. But space travel is tomorrow. Projects and their advancement are for now military secrets, but making assumptions costs nothing and it's fun. Here are some of mine. Around 1965, chemical-powered spacecraft will land humans on the Moon. Around 1968, spacecraft will reach Mars and Venus where they will orbit at the upper limits of the atmosphere. A man will hover with a rocket full of wings to the surface of both... Around 1975, space stations will revolve around the Earth, Mars and Venus. Around 1978, atomic energy was adapted to the propulsion of spacecraft. Around 1980, permanent colonies were born... (*) "Today" - 1950 (Foreword to the novel "The Vandals of the Void")

Jack Vance
(Source inconnue)


#42483
And what is success, after all? Another name for vanity!

Jack Vance
(The Mysteries of Maske: A Tour in Thaery)


#42484
Heinrich, the village communist, angrily pointed out that not far away, in Innsbruck, was the large American internment camp, and that they must have the effects of Coca-Cola and comic books on normal Austrians. - Absurd, barked another man. No Austrian born to a woman has ever possessed such a head, such eyes, such skin. No, these creatures are something else. Salamanders! "Zombies," mumbled someone else. Bodies from the realm of the dead! (In the new "Displaced Persons")

Jack Vance
(Adventurer)


#42485
"Death," he said in a hoarse voice. Death! The most despicable word in language, the ultimate obscenity.

Jack Vance
(Eternal life)


#42486
It was assumed that each visitor landed on Iszm with only one idea in mind: to steal a female house. (The Houses of Iszm)

Jack Vance
(The Last Castle and Other Crimes)


#42487
The history of humanity is and has never been a succession... a cycle of differentiation followed by the intimate fusion of the surviving subjects to return to uniformity.

Jack Vance
(The five gold ribbons)


#42488
This man was a few centimetres smaller than him, but he had wider shoulders and a more developed torso. His movements were determined, precise and effective. He did not waste his energy on superfluous gestures and had none of the idiosyncrasies to which most people owed their personality. Nothing dispelled the first impression we had of this man. It was dry, bland, sinister and dull.

Jack Vance
(Koryphon's domains)


#42489
The natives... called themselves the Sxyzyskzyiks (which means, as everyone knows, "the Civilized People")... Their culture included an appalling suite of precepts whose mastery was used to determine the social status of each. As a result, they barely taught the most of their time learning finger gestures, the right ways to wear earrings, the thousand and one ways of tying laces, ribbons, turbans, scarves, or the precise location of pickles on periwinkles, snails, ham salpicon, grilled meat and other dishes. ("Rhialto the Wonderful")

Jack Vance
(The Dying Earth, The Whole, Tome 2: Cugel Saga, Rhialto the Wonderful)


#42490
"The sun is already high in the sky," nisbet said. The men of the village will soon arrive to settle on their columns; and here they are. The men arrived in groups of two or three. Cugel watched them climb the columns and settle in the sun. Perplexed, he turned to Nisbet. -- Why do they do that? -- They absorb the healthy flow of sunlight. The higher the column, the more substantial is this flow, as is the prestige of the position. ("Cugel Saga")

Jack Vance
(The Dying Earth, The Whole, Tome 2: Cugel Saga, Rhialto the Wonderful)


#42491
The Minister of Public Health spoke in turn. The population of the central plain of Dronamand had multiplied to the point that housing was no longer sufficient... While crunching in a melon-spiced district, Aiello ordered the transfer of one million people a week to Nonamand, the sinister southern continent. In addition, all babies born into families with more than two children would be drowned. These were traditional methods of controlling population growth. They would be accepted without resentment.

Jack Vance
(Pao's languages)


#42492
- I have too many responsibilities. Among other things, bring that girl back to Cath. "Well! You're a victim of your sentimentalism. It can only get you into trouble. She's proud and cocky. Give her up! - If she wasn't proud of herself, I'd suspect her of being an idiot! exclaimed Reith with gusto.

Jack Vance
(Tschai Cycle, Volume 1: The Chasch)


#42505
The upper ahulphes have four smells meaning conviviality, hostility, and two varieties of excitement unknown to the human race. The countless races of lower ahulphes emit only hostility and an attractive fragrance. Sometimes the mentality of the ahulphe bears similarities to human intelligence, but this similarity is misleading and attempts to get along with the ahulphs on a human reasoning basis only lead to disappointments. For example, the ahulphe does not understand that one can work for money, despite all the care that can be put to explain the thing to him.

Jack Vance
(Asutra)


#42506
A symbolism must have existed in this confused set of dimensions, shapes and proportions, he thought; a technological civilization cannot be conceived without the mastery of a minimum of abstractions.

Jack Vance
(Asutra)


#42507
What's best: cheap submission or expensive independence?

Jack Vance
(Asutra)


#42508
Man enters the world through the genital portal: an original smear from which the Chilite unravels, like a snake that moults, by means of purifications and attitudes, but which ordinary men keep in them, like a stinking incub, until the grave!

Jack Vance
(The Chronicles of Durdane, Volume 1: The Faceless Man)


#42509
I'm a Dilk, and I don't know fear. However, when Death enters through the door, I go out the window.

Jack Vance
(Cugel saga)


#42510
This was how Turjan began his apprenticeship with Pandelume. By day, and late in the opalescent night of Embelyon, he was working under the invisible tutelage of the sorcerer. He learned the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, as well as a strange abstract science that Pandelume called "mathematics".

Jack Vance
(A magical world)


#42511
"Why do you have to beat poor Grofinet?" "Why are we doing anything?" grumbled the troll. Just because you feel it's necessary! For the pleasure of the task accomplished! "That's a good answer, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered," said Shimrod.

Jack Vance
(The Cycle of Lyonesse, Volume 1: The Garden of Suldrun)


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