Jack Vance on Time

"It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down."

"Ildefonse said ponderously: "If your analysis is correct, we must undertake to secure the future against this pangynic nightmare."

"Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy."

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

"The seconds marched past, traversing that mysterious boundary which separates future from past."

"Another busy day! So let’s to business. The clock moves forward; wasted time is life defeated!"

"If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint."

"If one basic axiom controls the cosmos, it must be this: In a situation of infinity every possible condition occurs, not once, but an infinite number of times."

"When one deals with the Murthe, the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, and Zanzel's repute carries no more weight than last year's mouse-dropping - if that much."

"Roger tried to find out all about her: he wanted, in one brief hour, to make up for a lifetime of non-acquaintance, a lifetime for all practical purposes wasted."

"“For an intelligent man,” snapped Reith, “you are extremely obstinate and unimaginative. Someday I am sure you will recognize your error; until then, believe whatever you care to believe."

"We are sufficiently at the mercy of machines, Roger; if our music must necessarily be mechanical, then it is time for us to throw in the sponge, and abandon all hope for the future of humanity."

"Your analyses at times border upon the mordant."

"Deeming the unsubstantiated dogma of a localized religious cult to be an undignified and unsuitable base on which to erect the chronology of galactic man, the members of this convention hereby declare that time shall now be reckoned from the year 2000 A.D. , which becomes the year 0. The revolution of Earth about Sol remains the standard annual unit."

"I am an unhappy man. I am haunted by my inability to express the inexpressible, to come to terms with the unknown. The pursuit of beauty is, of course, a major psychological drive. It its various guises—which is to say, the urge to perfection, the yearning to merge with the eternal, the explorer’s restlessness, the realization of an Absolute created by ourselves, yet larger than our totality—it is perhaps the most important human thrust."

"Madouc, this is my advice: pick up yonder clod of dirt, and tender it to that pop-eyed little imp, speaking these words: “Zocco, with this token I both imburse and reimburse you, in full fee and total account, now and then, anon and for ever, in this world and all others, and in every other conceivable respect, for each and every service you have performed for me or in my behalf, real or imaginary, to the limits of time, in all directions."