Top 15 Michael Kurland Quotes

Now, let us think our way out of this perplexity. How can you kill me without my suffering any ill effects from the deed?

A possibility eliminated is a risk not taken.

Life and the life processes are but an unimportant part of the whole that is the universe; intelligence and the designs of intelligence but a pattern drawn on sand. And yet that pattern which is life can pull into its weave much that is not of life, and give it a reason, a function, and a purpose that transcends the life that made it, in all physical measures of mass, distance, and duration.
So is entropy thwarted in some small measure, in random pockets throughout the universe.

I apologize for asking the obvious, but I have learned in matters magical to always state what I think is happening, because it so often is not what is actually the case at all.

He takes every change that has taken place over the past two hundred years as a personal affront.

The pleasure of receiving an accolade is somewhat diluted by the problem of living up to it.

I won’t say it’s impossible, my lord, but I will say that it’s so close to impossible as to be inconceivable.

We are greatly complimented, my lord," Marquis Sherrinford said dryly. "You don't think we're gibbering madmen.

A dead man, Sir Moses," Lord Darcy told him.
"Remember, young man, he isn't dead until I say he's dead," Sir Moses said. He pushed Lord Darcy aside and stepped over to the throne. He stared down at Master Sorcerer Dandro Bittman.
"This man is dead," Sir Moses said.
"Indeed he is, Sir Moses," Master Sean said, coming up behind him. "And that's something that neither you with your bone cutting nor I with my spells, nor the finest healer with the most sensitive hands in the kingdom, can do aught about.

Yours is a minority opinion, Major, as I suppose you know," Lord Darcy told him. "But it is one which should be heard more often. It is a question that deserves to be debated and discussed, and not simply have the answers assumed by those in authority.

That man is a fool," Lady Marta said, her dark eyes staring at Baron Hepplethong's retreating back. "Most men are fools, but he carries it to unnatural extremes. I have the misfortune to be distantly related to him. He believes in the natural superiority of the white race, the noble class, and the male sex. He also feels that people who wear green are morally superior to those who wear red or brown. I do not jest.

The Duchess of Cumberland smiled at the little sorcerer. “Really, Master Dandro,” she said. “That’s certainly an orthodox view.”
Master Dandro turned to her and smiled a rabbity smile. “Orthodoxy is my only doxy,” he said.

The rules that society chooses to live by have always struck me as especially fascinating," she said. "There are things one can do but not talk about, and there are things one can talk about but not do. There are things—not apparently gender-related—that men can do, but not women, and there are things women can do, but not men. We live in an invisible maze, and we have all learned where to turn and when, so as to find our way through."
"Some of the rules are good, Mary, and many are necessary," Lord Darcy said mildly.
"You misunderstood me, my dear," Mary of Cumberland told him. "As in magic, where there are absolutely essential words to say and gestures to make or the spell won't work; so in society there are absolutely essential words to say and gestures to make or we won't understand each other or trust each other, and it will all come tumbling down around us. The problem is that the rules of society, unlike magic, have never been formalized mathematically, and we don't know which words are essential to the spell and which are just silly words.

'Be not the first by whom the new is tried,' as that poet fellow said, 'Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.'

There’s more leg room in first class, to be sure, but there’s more poetry in second class—and more honesty in third.