The man was a somewhat seedy character. He might not actually have slept in his clothes, although the first impression was that he had. He clutched a threadbare cap with stubby, grimed fingers. The fi...
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.
Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.
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 th...
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...
One can sometimes see, and feel, the meaning, the depth, even the love, in a quiet face, in silent, bright eyes …
Any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology.
Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology.
These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the s...
The walls cried out to him. And voices cried out as well from the shadow of the past. He stood and listened to them, and now a strange thing struck him. The voices were there, but he did not hear the...
That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.
One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world’s tomorrow, another world’s today. And yesterday is tomorrow and t...
Once there had been joy, but now there was only sadness, and it was not, he knew, alone the sadness of an empty house; it was the sadness of all else, the sadness of the Earth, the sadness of the fail...
Man was spread thin throughout the galaxy. A lone man here, a handful there. Slim blobs of bone and brain and muscle to hold a galaxy in check. Slight shoulders to hold up the cloak of human greatness...
Let’s get going, Towser urged.Where do you want to go?Anywhere, said Towser. Just start going and see where we end up. I have a feeling… well, a feeling-Yes, I know, said Fowler.For he had the feeling...
In this room, he told himself, history might have been written, the course of cosmic empire might have been shaped and the fate of stars decided.But now there was no sign of life, just a brooding sile...
Had the memory worn thin? Had the debt he owed been paid? Had he discharged the last ounce of devotion? There are worlds out there, Andrew was saying, and life on some of them. Even some intelligence....
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...
Adams chuckled. The evenings are always nice. The Weather boys don’t let it rain until later on, when everyone’s asleep.
A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river – but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that...