Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.
Living creatures, if nothing else, have the right to life. It is their only truly precious possession, and the stealing of life is a wicked theft
Humanity is old, civilization 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...
If there were no fools,' said Circumbright, 'either among us or among them, we could co-inhabit the earth. there's the flaw in any compromise negotiation - the fact of fools, both among the Teleks and...
How can we do this? We are told that our world is too small for men of eternal life. This is true. We must become pioneers again, we must break out into new territories! The men of old carved living s...
Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patie...
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 b...
An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of afterthought—
The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine...
Lord Daldace looked about as if seeing the villa for the first time. What are dreams? Ordinary experience is a dream. The eyes, the ears, the nose: they present pictures on the brain, and these pictur...
I can resolve your perplexity,’ said Fianosther. ‘Your booth occupies the site of the old gibbet, and has absorbed unlucky essences. But I thought to notice you examining the manner in which the timbe...
From Life, Volume III, by Unspiek, Baron Bodissey: I am constantly startled and often amused by the diverse attitudes toward wealth to be found among the peoples of the Oikumene. Some societies equate...
Earth . . . A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge . . . Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is red and feeble . . . A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen...
Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to these basic enemies. — Xaviar Skolcamp, Over-Centennial Fellow of the Institute, indulgently, in response to a journalist’s too-searching q...
Star-watching: at night the stars of Alastor Cluster blaze in profusion. The atmosphere refracts their light; the sky quivers with beams, glitters, and errant flashes. The Trills go out into their gar...
Somewhere there is mystery. It impels one to theosophy: to the worship of a space-god, or a god of light. Theory dissolves the mystery, though it lays bare a cryptic new stratum. Quite likely there is...
She seems somewhat morose and out of sorts. Do you beat her often?''I must admit that I do not.''There is the answer! Beat her well; beat her often! It will bring roses to her cheeks! There is nothing...
It is thus because it has always been thus. Is not this reason enough?
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 r...
I admit to a specialized occupation, which in fact has not so much as acquired a name. Not to put too keen an edge on it, I wait under gallows until the corpse drops, whereupon I assume possession of...