L. Sprague de Camp Quotes

I soon found, however, that most of these parties bored me to tears. These magnates are not really such villains as the poor are wont to think them; their worst fault is dullness. They talk about their games and sports, their children and relatives, their purchases and sales, their aches and pains, and they talk about them over and over.

I find that verse provides one of the cheapest and most harmless of life’s major pleasures.

Antis, looking up from his fire-making to watch the flying fish, remarked, “That’s an omen of change.”
“What is?”
“When a flying fish circles withershins.”
“Oh, silly! You see omens in everything, and changes are always occurring.”

“We are a law abiding folk, sir. We do not permit private persons to indulge their feuds on their own, and we have some most ingenious penalties for homicide.”
“Mean ye,” said Jillo, “that amongst you Pathenians, a gentleman may not avenge an insult by the gage of battle?”
“Of course not! We are not bloodthirsty barbarians.”
“Ye mean there are no true gentlemen amongst you,” sniffed Jillo.

You make it sound wonderful, sir. Could I but be sure…”
“Wait to be sure of anything and you will find yourself looking out through the sides of a funerary urn, your quest unaccomplished.

That man has convinced me that he is a veritable philosopher. No ordinary man could be so awkward and absent-minded.

In all these fights and flights I have never known that mad joy of battle of which the epics speak. Before the combat I am frightened, during it I am confused, and after it I am weary and disgusted.

But what argument could I offer? It was nothing but an irrational feeling—the kind of “premonition” we get from time to time but remember only on the rare occasions when it is fulfilled by the event. I had no evidence.

Berosos sighed. “Ah me! Once we, too, were a race of warriors and conquerors.”
“Be thankful you are no longer,” said Dikaiarchos. “These kings reap a bit of glory, but what do they accomplish besides burning cities, killing and enslaving multitudes, and destroying the accumulated wealth and wisdom of the ages to aggrandize their own mediocre selves? He who ascertains a new law of nature or invents a new device is greater than all your conquerors, and in the long run has more influence.”

As the Persians say, kindness to the lion is cruelty to the lamb.

I have deeply studied the female mind. Somewhat to my surprise, I found it, not the same as the male, but on balance quite as able.

You Afkans seem like a grimly puritanical lot," said Halran, "if you will excuse my saying so."
Ndovu beamed. "No apologies needed. What you say is high praise here.

There must be something. No, nothing. But there must be, if she could only be clever enough to think of it. What, then? How do you know there is anything to think of? There simply must be. But that’s wretched logic; things don’t exist because you wish they did…

Certes, if we hanged everyone with a murderer in’s pedigree, not enough would survive to bury the bodies!

Folly is mortals’ self-selected misfortune.