G.Carman > G.Carman's Quotes

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
― Archilochus

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo - If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“The harvest of this world is to the resolute, and he that is infirm of purpose is ground betwixt the upper and the nether millstone”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is just”
― E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? . . . Who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“with cunning colubrine and malice viperine and sleights serpentine”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Thunder and blood and night must usurp our parts, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“The sun stooped to the western waves, entering his bath of blood-red fire. He sank, and all the ways were darkened.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“This last best luck of all: that earth should gape for me when my great deeds were ended.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“In which star of the unclimbed sky wilt though begin our search? Or in which of the secret streams of the ocean where the last green rays are quenched in oozy darkness?”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world. Though hast my sword. Strike. Death shall be a sweet rest to me. Thraldom, not death, should terrify me.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“A thin ungracious drink is the well-spring, a drink for queasy-stomached skipjacks: for sand-levericks, not for men. And like it is the dayspring: an ungrateful sapless hour, an hour for stab-i'-the-backs and cold-blooded betrayers. Ah, give me wine, and noon-day vices, and brazen-browed iniquities.”
― E. R. Eddison

“Art thou so deeply read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison to the malice of a woman?”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Lightning shall be slow to my hasting.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“But Gro smiled a sad smile and said, "Why should we by words of ill omen strike yet another blow where the tree tottereth?”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“These things hath Fate brought to pass, and we be but Fate's whipping-tops bandied what way she will.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Abase thee and serve me, worm of the pit. Else will I by and by summon out of ancient night intelligences and dominations mightier far than thou, and they shall serve my ends, and thee shall they chain with chains of quenchless fire and drag thee from torment to torment through the deep.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“An offer indeed," said Lord Brandoch Daha; "if it be not in mockery. Say it loud, that my folk may hear." Corund did so, and the Demons heard it from the walls of the burg. Lord Brandoch Daha stood somewhat apart from Juss and Spitfire and their guard. "Libel it me out," he said. "For good as I now must deem thy word, thine hand and seal must I have to show my followers ere they consent with me in such a thing."
"Write thou," said Corund to Gro. "To write my name is all my scholarship." And Gro took forth his ink-born and wrote in a great fair hand this offer on a parchment. "The most fearfullest oaths thou knowest," said Corund; and Gro wrote them, whispering, "He mocketh us only." But Corund said, "No matter: 'tis a chance worth our chancing," and slowly and with labour signed his name to the writing, and gave it to Lord Brandoch Daha. Brandoch Daha read it attentively, and tucked it in his bosom beneath his byrny.
"This," he said, "shall be a keepsake for me of thee, my Lord Corund. Reminding me," and here his eyes grew terrible, "so long as there surviveth a soul of you in Witchland, that I am still to teach the world throughly what that man must abide that durst affront me with such an offer.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Are ye ta'en with the swindle or the turn-sickness? Or are ye out of your wits?”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Surely,” he said, “the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom’s fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning’s fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Kings and governors that do exult in strength and beauty and lustihood and rich apparel, showing themselves for awhile upon the stage of the world and open dominion of high heaven, what are they but the gilded summer fly that decayeth with the dying day?”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Surely... the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning's fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn: which if their large philosophy question not if it be a bridal sheet or a shroud, hath not this unpolicied calm his justification ever in the returning year, and is it not an instance to laugh our carefulness out of fashion? Of us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“A great king should rather be a dog that killeth clean, than a cat that patteth and sporteth with his prey.”
― E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“I sware unto you my furtherance if I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet, since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since this virtue it hath that he who weareth it shall not fall alive into the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss, give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me."

...

So they fared back to the spy-fortalice, and night came down on the hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt them. As the Demons looked backward in the moonlight to where Zeldornius stood gazing on the dead, a noise as of thunder made the firm land tremble and drowned the howling of the wind. And they beheld how earth gaped for Zeldornius.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

“Oaths be of the heart, and he that breaketh them in open fact is oft, as now, no breaker in truth, for already were they scorned and trampled on by his opposites.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros