Murray Leinster

“But it might not be true enough. It might be less than...well...sufficiently true in a particular instance.”

“Twilight remained, a fairy half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were.”

“He needed some rather extensive changes in the relationship of the cosmos to himself.”

“The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them.”

“Hoddan felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent machine represents.”

“A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.”

““You’ve got to do something!” insisted Fani. “I saw Father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he’s planning some skulduggery!””

“It couldn’t happen! Hoddan couldn’t conceive of such a thing. But a recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe also.”

““You are wonderful!” she said with conviction.“I used to cherish that illusion myself,” said Hoddan.”

“This was the second time in his life he’d been on a horse. It was two too many.”

“Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him.”

“He irritably suspected himself of a tendency to make enemies unnecessarily.”

“Again time passed. In one of the remoter galaxies a supernova flamed, and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—and to mankind the one event was just as important as the other.”

“From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss.”

“There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.”

“He signed himself prince of this, lord of that, baron of the other thing and claimant to the dukedom of something else.”

“When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked.”

“There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn’t realize that there are people so stupid you can’t show them anything.”

“And this was no observation by a mere human, who might delude himself. This was a report from complex electronic devices. It was images formed on phosphors coated on radar screen tubes, excited by accelerated electrons whose pattern of impact was governed by echoes from the original of the image. Phosphors do not imagine. Electrons are not affected by panic. As a radar image it was a faithful report—in its own terms, without interpretation—of something that actually was.”

“Herb doctor is the polite term used by witch doctors when they advertise their services in newspapers. It is commonly believed that they can relieve all situations not caused by a judge or a grand jury.”