L. Sprague de Camp Quotes

As all young men must, I was learning the painful lesson that there is no substitute for experience.

A grudge makes a starveling diet.

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

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

I must be stupid," I said. "I don't doubt that his talk is full of profound hidden truths, but I find it terribly hard to understand."
Dikaiarchos laughed. "I'll tell you a secret, Chares. I cannot understand it, either."
"You, sir?"
"Yes. It may be that we are both stupid, or it may be that there is nothing to understand. It is a good practical rule that, if a man cannot explain himself in terms that any reasonably intelligent listener can comprehend, he doesn't know what he is talking about himself.

There is nothing so dangerous as an ignorant and frightened man.

'The first in banquets, but the last in battle,'" quoted Pyrron. "Still and all, he suffered from the king's disease."
"What is that?"
"Self-conceit, which, as the proverb says, leads to self-destruction.

You cannot expect men to be rational about national enmities," said Dikaiarchos. "As everyone knows, people like to have friends, but they also like to have enemies. A hereditary foe is a useful thing to have. It gives you somebody to feel superior to; it provides a handy target for all the furies and hatreds which you have boiling around inside you but which you dare not direct at those nearer you.

It was very puzzling. Why had all this happened to her? In the old days, according to her researches, one blamed a jealous or capricious god for one’s undeserved misfortunes, but nobody had taken the gods seriously for generations. It was, thinkers agreed, a case of the mysterious operations of luck. Emotionally, however, blind chance was a poor substitute for a god when you wanted something on which to turn your resentment at the hard treatment accorded you by fate.

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.

“It is a common belief that all paleskins are superhumanly lusty and incorrigibly lecherous.”
“Now it is you who flatter us,” said Halran.

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.”

I’ve been saying a special prayer to Eunmar; did you know I believe in the old gods? If you try hard enough, I’ve found, you can believe anything.

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…