Avram Davidson Quotes

And then in that, admittedly magnificent, abrupt moment you saw what I concede without argument was the face of rather an attractive wench, and—Zeus! you weren’t thinking, man—you were simply reacting. It wasn’t your heart, it was your codpiece that the impulse came from!

Hmm...hmm. A stag hunt. To what elaborate lengths the equestrian classes go in order to draw out the simple business of butchering venison.

It is not in the nature of any people that it should willingly endure being ruled by another people, whether it is ruled ill or ruled well.

Sorcery works against Nature, magic works with it.

No greed was comparable to the appeal of self-sacrifice.

The short man was all of a piece, but there was nothing reassuring in this; it was a piece of the same material that too many high school principals, boys’ camp directors, and military and naval officers are made of: a texture or quality often dignified by the description, “ability to command”—the desire to bully, override, bear down—the capacity to do so by virtue of office—the habit of having done so for a long time and the confidence of continuing to do so for a long time.

When the records of our civilization are balanced, then—but perhaps not before—the real importance of dental science will be appreciated. Now it is merely valued at the moment of toothache.

I can tell you that only a fool destroys useful things merely because he doesn’t like them.

In general I find little girls enchanting. What a shame they grow up to be big girls and make our lives as miserable as we allow them, and oft-times more.

Rumor, I fear, is scarcely as accurate as he is rapid.

It’s not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It’s merely a matter of who gets caught.

Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return.

Recall the instructor at the Academy: “What is Man, young aspirants? Man is an animal that trades…”

But the Red Man denied that time, though it must always be paid for, could always be paid for in money.

Things were seldom what they seemed. People feared to tempt powers spiritual or temporal or illegal by displays of well being, and the brick screens in from of (or behind, depending on whether one were going in or going out) the doors blocked both the gaze of the curious and the path of demons. Demons can travel only in straight lines; it is the sons of men whose ways are devious.