Fritz Leiber Quotes

“So tell me, giant philosopher, why we’re not dukes,” the Gray Mouser demanded, unrolling a forefinger from the fist on his knee so that it pointed across the brazier at Fafhrd. “Or emperors, for that matter, or demigods.”
“We are not dukes because we’re no man’s man,” Fafhrd replied smugly, setting his shoulders against the stone horse-trough. “Even the duke must butter up a king, and demigods the gods. We butter no one. We so our own way, choosing our own adventures—and our own follies! Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.”
“There speaks the hound turned out by his last master and not yet found new boots to slaver on,” the Mouser retorted with comradely sardonic impudence.

Old legends said Death had a skinny sister denominated Pain, passionately devoted to the loathsome torture that often was Death’s prelude.

Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.

There are vampires and vampires, and the ones that suck blood aren’t the worst.

They, like many priests, had been much too fanatical and not nearly as clever as the god they served.

Work and pray,
Live on hay.
You’ll get pie
In the sky
When you die—
It’s a lie!

Aye, we played at being mice, forgetting cats are real.

What was the whole literature of supernatural horror but an essay to make death itself exciting?—wonder and strangeness to life’s very end.

With a happy roaring shout only he could hear, blood rushed through the Mouser’s arteries toward his center, reviving his limp manhood in a mere moment, as a magically summoned genie offhandedly builds a tower.

“Conscience is only social pressure,” he told her, tense without quite knowing why, “the impulse to submerge your ego in that of the herd, and do what other people want you to because you’re afraid of their censure. Realistic self-interest frees a person from the childish restrictions of conscience.”
“Are you sure of that, Jarles? What about your dreams? Conscience may be partly what you say it is, but it’s more than that. It’s hearkening to the wisest thoughts that have occurred to the minds of the human race.”

Pulg, alongside his pink streak of sentimentality, had recently taken to sporting a gray one of superstition.

But now the priests think only one thing. How to hold on to their power as long as mankind lasts—until the sun darkens and the earth freezes!

Sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.

Thieves and astrologers moved restlessly in their sleep, sensing that the hours of night and work were drawing near.

The more brilliant the enchanted male, the stupider the enchanting female.