L. Sprague de Camp Quotes

Then who were the Ancient Ones?"
Halran shrugged. "There are as many interpretations of those myths as there are mythographers.

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

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.

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.”

Let me tell you a little secret. A man’s ability as a swordsman of the other kind, to borrow your words, hinges much upon his health of body and peace of mind. If you’d fain cause his—ah—resolution to droop, you have but oft to berate him in harsh and wounding terms. If you’re fain to have him serve you with vigor, flatter and praise him; make him think himself worthier than in his heart he knows himself to be.

Ah! Here we be! 'Human beings most readily love others of their species who, alpha, do services for them; beta, flatter them; gamma, refrain from reproaching them for errors; and delta, cultivate good nature and ease of manner.'

Before sending my opinions forth across the chasm of surmise, I prefer to wait until they’re provided with a more solid bridge of fact.

Titled wenches make chancy wives, being full of hoity-toity snobbery. They fancy themselves beings of a superior species by virtue of blue blood, when ’tis well known that most noble houses were founded by successful banditti who frightened some weakling ruler into granting titles.

For thousands of years, priests and philosophers have told us to love mankind without giving any sound reason for loving the creatures. The mass of them are a lot of cruel, treacherous, hairless apes. They hate us intellectuals, longhairs, highbrows, eggheads, or double-domes, despite—or perhaps because—without us they would still be running naked in the wilderness and turning over flat stones for their meals. Love them? Hah!

It was hardly fair to his opponents, but I have never had much sympathy for the victims of gambling sharks. If they were not trying to get something for nothing, they would not expose themselves to being taken.

I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real one was far dirtier, more narrow-minded, brutal, orthodox, and superstitious than I could have ever conceived without seeing it.

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

All supernaturalism is simply a scheme to enable a class of magicians called priests to live without working.

I have met Master Parthenius," growled Thorolf. "He is the sort to whom, if he were drowning, I should be happy to throw an anvil.

There’s more magic in a well-aimed three-talent ball than in all the wizards of Egypt.