For what is life but greed in action? - Fritz Leiber

“Legends travel on rainbow wings and sport gaudy colors,” the harbormaster answered him, “while truth plods on in sober garb.”

Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favors that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping.

What is idealism? It is distortion. A giving of false values to things which in reality do not possess those values. Personalities differ chiefly in their pattern of values. When the values are largely false, the personality is unstable.