1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
7795
7796
7797
7798
7799
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 921a68f | You're an idealist. The idealists are always the revolutionaries, the cat's paws. Then the realists consolidate, compromise and liquidate the opposition. | crusade-to-maxis dyal-travec idealism realism revolution | Jack Vance | |
| faf7c7f | While Milke gingerly carried the packet of explosive across the lake, Paskell stood by the port watching. Milke surveyed the landscape with fine calculation, setting down the packet, moving it a few yards to the right, another few yards toward the defile. Finally satisfied, he looked back to Paskell for approval. Paskell signaled casually, and his hand fell against the detonation switch. He looked out toward Milke, hastily jumped into his [.. | black-humor bumbling near-death prospecting pusillanimity three-legged-joe | Jack Vance | |
| 8ee0f78 | Do they look Russian?" Vance did not sound concerned. "Big shaved heads, jeans, and T-shirts. Yeah, old man, I'd say they look pretty Russian. I mean they're not wearing Cossack outfits, but hey, it's the next best thing." | Jack Silkstone | ||
| 4b51e47 | The red sun pulled itself from sleep and glared upon the world that it must still serve, though itself of more than pensionable age. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| a65e47d | Le persone che vivevano in massa, penso Shorn, erano come ciottoli su di una spiaggia: ciascuna levigava il suo vicino, fino a quando tutte erano assolutamente uniformi. | Jack Vance | ||
| 224f448 | At the last moments of the universe, with eternal darkness converging from all sides, surely someone will arise and cry out: 'Hold back the end for a final moment, while I pay tribute to the gallant brewmasters who have provided us a pathway of golden glory down the fading corridors of time!' And then, is it not possible that a bright gap will appear in the dark, through which the brewmasters are allowed to proceed, to build a finer univers.. | Jack Vance | ||
| e1c0635 | He didn't realize it, but with those words he had played directly into Sabri Ramirez's hands. The scenario was now a lock. When Jack Mulhoney turned back to his radio, he only heard static. 7:47 p.m. Vance watched as the frigate got off a warning tracer, but to no effect. The Hind ignored it, as a stream of 57mm rockets from under the chopper's stubby starboard wing flared down, while the radar-slaved machine gun beneath the nose opened.. | Thomas Hoover | ||
| 25a6902 | In the back of the van, the teenager was sitting on a layer of small bricks wrapped in wax paper. He was clutching what looked like a slot car controller, his fist clenched around it. "Release-activated detonator," Ice stated calmly, "and probably at least half a ton of C4." "I've seen this before," said Vance. "You see how he's clean-shaven, head and all. I've seen this before in Yemen. He's been purified for the big bang. Poor bastard's w.. | Jack Silkstone | ||
| b15f9d8 | How did you know the CIA would send me?" Vance asked. "That, my friend, was Allah's will, or perhaps it was because I asked for you personally. It depends what you believe." | Jack Silkstone | ||
| 3d7fa1f | Remember, Bish," Vance growled, "this is a covert op. No blowing shit up or jazzing up the local law enforcement. If Dostiger realizes we're onto him, he'll just get the fuck out of Dodge. Keep this clean, not like that shitfight in the Philippines." The recent Philippines operation that Vance was alluding to had started as a simple case of surveillance, followed by a precise assassination. Instead, Bishop and his team had taken it upon the.. | Jack Silkstone | ||
| 3fd6d18 | Then that hunch of yours has turned out pretty well." "It's a bit early but it would seem so." "Getting more like Bishop every week." Vance grinned. Chua frowned. "Unlikely. Unless I start chasing random women and getting myself ambushed every five minutes." | Jack Silkstone | ||
| fdc48d8 | The perplexing thing was that Elon seemed to drift off into a trance at times. People spoke to him, but nothing got through when he had a certain, distant look in his eyes. This happened so often that Elon's parents and doctors thought he might be deaf. "Sometimes, he just didn't hear you," said Maye. Doctors ran a series of tests on Elon, and elected to remove his adenoid glands, which can improve hearing in children. "Well, it didn't chan.. | Ashlee Vance | ||
| fd49c1f | To the furthest reach of my memory, Rogol Domedonfors ruled the city. He knew lore of all ages, secrets of fire and light, gravity and countergravity, the knowledge of superphysic numeration, metathasm, corolopsis. | jack-vance | Jack Vance | |
| 15f9da6 | Race you back. Bet you twenty bob I win." Mitch pressed the ignition button of his customized ride. The 1,000cc engine roared to life. "You serious? God knows what you've done to that thing. Probably goes like a jackrabbit on meth." "Come on, Vance, everyone knows you and Flash are the biker heads. There's no way yours is stock." Vance grinned as he climbed into his ATV, barely fitting inside the roll cage. He turned over the engine and it .. | Jack Silkstone | ||
| d4c7491 | Let me get this straight," asked Vance. "You want to fund us to run around the world whacking all those evil fuckers that the CIA never let us touch?" "Not how I would have described it, but yes, that is the crux of the concept." There was silence at the table as the three men considered Tariq's proposal. Ice broke the silence. "I'm in." Mitch followed suit. "Me too. I need a new" | Jack Silkstone | ||
| 6d21d09 | So this is the renegade running black ops in my Emirates," Beecroft said. "I'm sorry: black ops?" Vance returned the scornful gaze, equally unimpressed with the ambassador. Beecroft sported a portly frame and ruddy complexion, the result of years on the cocktail circuit. "Yes, the CIA didn't seek my approval for your little mission." The ambassador's voice was clipped and pompous. His chins wobbled as he spoke. "Last time I checked, the CIA.. | Jack Silkstone | ||
| 1718462 | Major Chua speaking." "Hey bud, it's Vance." "You're supposed to be dead." "That's no way to greet an old friend." Chua looked down at the phone; the caller ID was blank and yet the call was still coming through on the encrypted military network. "Vance, where are you calling from?" "I'm on a beach under a palm tree." | Jack Silkstone | ||
| d44cfac | Where cowards never venture, heroes find splendor. So | Jack Vance | ||
| 9e099bf | Beecroft pushed back his chair and struggled to remove his corpulent frame from its clutches. He finally jumped to his feet, drawing himself up to his full five feet nine inches. "You will do no such thing. This is my post and I will--" "You will sit the fuck down, Ambassador!" Vance growled from a height advantage of almost six inches. Beecroft shrunk like a deflated balloon, dropping back into his chair." | Jack Silkstone | ||
| 1d88246 | First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics. | Bertolt Brecht | ||
| adf75a6 | And why should I," asked Joe, "do something for someone who isn't even born yet? Why should I look beyond the years of my own life? When I die, I die, and all the shouting and the glory, all the banners and the bugles will be nothing to me. I will not know whether I lived a great life or a very poor one." "The race," said Grant. Joe laughed, a shout of laughter. "Race preservation, race advancement. That's what you're getting at. Why should.. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 2b42c81 | fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship--a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family. Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it a man was on his ow.. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 510387d | to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as people. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| f948ffc | A man, he told himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 0b15452 | If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours--a lesson in how to get along--the world would be a whole lot better. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 722695e | Ne, mislekh si, ne mozhesh da tr'gnesh nazad prez prakha na minalite godini, prez spomenite, prez s'bitiiata, prez promenite, nast'pili v teb i neia, i da se opitash da si v'rnesh niakoi den ili dori chas. A i da ti se udade tova, niama da mozhesh da go ochistish ot nasloiliia se prakh i nikoga ne shche mu v'rnesh predishniia blias'k. No mozhe bi toi nikoga ne e bil bliask'v? Mozhe bi ti sam si go izmislil tak'v prez d'lgite chasove na samo.. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| be38d52 | For what need was there to go anywhere? It all was here. By simply twirling a dial one could talk face to face with anyone wished, could go, by sense, if not in body, anywhere one wished. Could attend the theater or hear a concert or browse in a library halfway around the world. Could transact any business one might need to transact without rising from one's chair. Webster | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 8283310 | aimed not at military concentrations, but at total populations. He | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 72db9b0 | I trade with you my mind. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 3ae4729 | although myth may be romanticized and woefully short of fact, it must, by definition, have some foundation in lost happenings. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 64ad17d | A lark sailed out of a grassy plot and soared high into the sky, and seeing it, he waited for the trill of liquid song to spray out of its throat and drip out of the blue. But there was no song, as there would have been in spring. He | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 9e0cb4b | Our computers have no purpose. They are not alive." "But if they were alive?" "Well, in that case, I suppose the ultimate purpose would be the storage of a universal data and its correlation." "That perhaps is right," they said. "We are living computers." "Then there is no end for you. You'll keep on forever." "We are not sure," they said. "But ..." "Data," they told me, pontifically, "is the means to one end only--arrival at the truth. Per.. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 86a0ebe | Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend rather than a thing that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 1ea1ede | They're not our responsibility," gritted the mayor. "Whatever happens to them is their own hard luck. We didn't ask them here. We don't want them here. They contribute nothing to the community. You're going to tell me they're misfits. Well, can I help that? You're going to say they can't find jobs. And I'll tell you they could find jobs if they tried to find them. There's work to be done, there's always work to be done. They've been filled .. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 381b278 | You say a thing so often and so well that after a time everyone believes it. Even, finally, yourself. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| dacec09 | It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle. Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle a.. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| ed280a2 | Good man, Thorne, thought Adams. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 3b94b47 | The name is Asher Sutton. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 3c42b83 | Sutton is a good man. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 8310a12 | He tilted back his head and stared up at the sky and marveled once again, as he had marveled many other times on many other planets, at the sheer, devastating loneliness and alienness of unfamiliar stars. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 5d9899e | And with the quietness came an abiding sense of peace that seemed to seep into the very fiber of one's being. It was no synthetic thing--not as if someone had invoked a peace and peace then was allowed to exist by sufferance. It was a present and an actual peace, the peace of mind that came with the calmness of a sunset after a long, hot day, or the sparkling, ghost-like shimmer of a springtime dawn. You felt it inside of you and all about .. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| b5f19c4 | He is hated, because he teaches hate. We obey him because we must. He holds our minds in the hollow of his hand. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| cc78c54 | Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it a man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| c979bff | Money here on Earth is more than the paper or the metal that you use for money, more than the rows of figures that account for money. Here on Earth you have given money a symbolism such as no medium of exchange has anywhere else I have ever known or heard of. You have made it a power and a virtue and you have made the lack of it despicable and somehow even criminal. You measure men by money and you calibrate success with money and you almos.. | Clifford D. Simak |