% "There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now." -- Vogon (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fit the First) % "What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh for heaven's sake mankind, it's only four light years away you know. I'm sorry but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your look out. Energize demolition beams. God! I don't know, apathetic bloody planet - I've no sympathy at all..." -- Vogon (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fit the First) % "...but though even words like jujuflop, swut and turlingdrome are now perfectly acceptable in common usage, there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the galaxy except one, where they don't know what it means. That word is... BELGIUM." (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fit the Tenth) % Three stages in the history of warfare: RETRIBUTION I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother. ANTICIPATION I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother. DIPLOMACY I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you, on the pretext that your brother did it. (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) % "It's the weird colour scheme that freaks me. Every time I try to operate one of these weird black controls, labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let me know I've done it. What is this, some kind of galactic hyper-hearse?" -- Zaphod Beeblebrox (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) % 'Have you no idea of development, of progress?' 'I have seen them both in an egg. We call it Going Bad in Narnia.' % "I object to that remark very strongly!" said the Bulldog. % Life isn't all fricassied frog and eel pie. -Puddleglum the Marshwiggle % Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; Strike the bell, and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had. (The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis) % "Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway." -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit" % When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. --- Winnie the Pooh % "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship. "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious." -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star" % HISTORY LESSON History repeats itself. Has to. Nobody listens. -Steve Turner % "Only an owl sees more clearly at midnight than at dawn." -- Gile's sister in "The Testing of Tertius" by Robert Newman % "There is no such thing as a doctrine, a theory, or an idea which lacks the capacity to imprison the mind." -- The Fourteen Sages' Commentaries, v 1, ch 3, Suntrev 15 (The Warriors of Dawn, M.A. Foster) % "If you ever crash, no matter if it's in your own yard, STOP. DO NOTHING. Remember first who you are. How you got there. Trust no impression, make no identifications. The survivor is Adam, but he is an Adam who does not know if he has fallen into Eden or Hell." -- Paraleimon Kardikas in "The Survivor's Manual" (The Warriors of Dawn, M.A. Foster) % "It is only when one has somewhere to go that is becomes manifestly important to know precisely where one is." -- Cannialin Srith-Moren, woven Deren (The Warriors of Dawn, M.A. Foster) % "The only constant aspect of change is the fluctuation of its rate." -- Weldyanzhoi the Great (The Warriors of Dawn, M.A. Foster) % "Truth, such as we find it, appears in mythic stories, while recited facts fall into mere opinions. And the more facts are ennumerated, the more opinionated and erroneous the matter becomes. At the level of pure facts, there is nothing but chaos. Ah, to be sure, facts are real, one should respect them, but one should beware of them greatly, for it is the feel of the flow which makes the dancer beautiful." -- Brunsimber Frazhen (The Warriors of Dawn, M.A. Foster) % "Ends? What ends? I know only beginnings!" -- Valdollin Tlanh (The Warriors of Dawn, M.A. Foster) % "Remember who we are. We are not Solcintran. We are not derived from the Old Houses. We are Korval. Keep the Contract, protect the Tree, gather ships, survive. But never, never, never let them make you forget who you are." -- Van Col yos'Phellium, Second Delm of Korval, entry in the Delm's Diary for Jeelum Twelfthday in the Fourth Relumma of the Year Named Qin (Scout's Progress, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) % A Dragon does not forget. Nor does it remember wrongly. -- From the Liaden Book of Dragons (Scout's Progress, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) % Never assume that you have discovered a Dragon's weak point until it is dead *and* forgotten, for joy is fleeting and a Dragon's revenge is forever. -- From the Liaden Book of Dragons (Scout's Progress, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) % Preserve your life, preserve your folk, preserve the Tree, no matter what the means. Grovel, if your enemy demands it; beg; swallow any insult. Stay alive, preserve you and yours. Watch close, stay alert. And when your enemy turns his back, kill him and run free. -- Exerpted from Cantra yos'Phellium's Log Book (Scout's Progress, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) % "He wondered what ol' Z. Z. would have said to the notion that the plot of one of his novels would endear a woman's family to the idea of marriage to an alien on a world eleven light years from his home in Muscle Head, Massachusetts." -- Empyrion: The Siege of Dome, Stephen Lawhead % "Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read his Bible. That was what was the matter with *him*. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everyone else's Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his and finds we have no arms and legs." -- Father Brown (The Sign of the Broken Sword, G.K. Chesterton) % The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. -- opening paragraph, "The Napoleon of Notting Hill", G. K. Chesterton % The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me": the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. -- G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to the Book of Job % The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Materialists and madmen never have doubts. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Love is not blind; that is the last thing it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Seriousness is not a virtue. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism and Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % The oriental deity is like a giant who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it; but the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange generosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its own accord shake hands with him. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man "damned": but it is strictly religious and philisophic to call him damnable. -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy % Few people knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering sunset clouds. -- on Basil Grant "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown" (The Club of Queer Trades, G.K. Chesterton) %