Justice, a human invention, is as protean as the race itself, and varies from canton to canton. The traveler must be wary lest he contravene some unf… - Jack Vance

“What’s the trouble? Given up?”
“What is there to give up?”
“Confidence.”
She said in a soft voice, “We’re slaves; slaves have no need for confidence.”
“I’m not a slave until I feel like a slave.”

His decision was preordained, and derived from a perverse quirk in his mentality. At his deepest, most essential level, Hack knew himself for an insipid mediocrity, of no intellectual distinction and no particular competence in any direction. This was an insight so shocking that Hack never allowed it past the threshold of consciousness, and he conducted himself as if the reverse were true.

Destiny could not bring him this far only to deal him failure!