A troubled society is like a man with a stomach-ache. When he purges himself, he improves. - Jack Vance

“Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”
“Decidedly so, if the villain, for the purposes of his joke, thinks to simulate the altruist.”
“Then how will you know villain from altruist?”
Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.”

Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.

The curious race, the Earthers. Young, only a few years removed from savagery, contaminated by the past, correspondingly exuberant and direct.