Matt Hughes Quotes

"Very well," I said, "let us roll the pebble and get the avalanche on its way."

The commerciants of Olkney were renowned for their egalitarian spirit, judging rich and poor alike solely by the weight of their purses.

Assigning blame is a fixation of an ineffective mind.

Insanity was not unknown among the wealthy. Indeed, some forms of madness had sometimes been cultivated as fashionable accessories.

"Knowledge can be a hindrance to right action," answered the little man. "There are those who hold that, if we but knew the full ramifications of even our least deeds, the ensuing concatenations of cause and effect would paralyze us with indecision."

"Are you familiar with Wallader's theory that every society is fundamentally organized around one or another of the cardinal sins?"
"I believe not," I said.
"He argues that the true seed of every culture, whatever the ideals to which it gives lip service, always turns out to be one of the seven mortal iniquities identified by the ancients: pride, greed, and anger are the most common; lust, gluttony, and envy less so; those based on sloth usually do not last."

It is as hugely irrelevant to us as the literary outpourings of a poet are to a bacterium living in his lower bowel. Indeed, to an even tinier mite living in the bacterium’s vacuole. It just doesn’t matter.

"You're worried, aren't you?" he said.
"Again, you have chosen a word not large enough to cover more than the barest fraction of the situation."

Have you considered the possibility that our standards as to what is important may differ?

"This conversation would be more easily conducted," said Filidor, "if I had any notion of what you are talking about."

I reflected that the genial glow that surrounds the doer of a good deed loses some of its warmth and brightness when the recipient meets every action with the pinched face of suspicion.

She could be—he hoped would be—what he had always lacked: a center to the map of his life, that one, necessary fixed point from which he could navigate out into the world and by which he could always find his way back home again.

A lifelong habit of being right also had the effect of diminishing one’s social appeal, especially among those who prefer to keep the bubble of their various illusions a safe distance from a needle-sharp and probing intelligence.

I realized that Chumblot’s brief had told only the official story which, as in many sophisticated societies, departed starkly from the practical facts.

“We should be frank with each other,” Lavelan said.
It had been my experience that most conversations that were launched on such a declaration represented an attempt by the initiator to gain far more information than he intended to give.