E.R. Eddison Quotes

Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o'erleaping actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is become for me a vision only and a mock-show.

These things hath Fate brought to pass, and we be but Fate's whipping-tops bandied what way she will.

Ultimate truths are to be attained, if at all, in some immediate way: by vision rather than by ratiocination.

The sun stooped to the western waves, entering his bath of blood-red fire. He sank, and all the ways were darkened.

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."

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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.

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?

Lightning shall be slow to my hasting.

But to tell even a tenth part of the marvels rich and beautiful that were in the house of Krothering: its cool courts and colonnades rich with gems and fragrant with costly spices and strange blooms: its bed-chambers where, caught like Aphrodite in her golden net, the spirit of sleep seemed ever to shake slumber from its plumes, and none might be waking long in those chambers but sweet sleep overcame their eyelids: the Chamber of the Sun and the Chamber of the Moon, and the great middle hall with its high gallery and ivory stair: to tell of all these were but to cloy imagination with picturing in one while of over-much glory and splendour.

Thunder and blood and night must usurp our parts, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece.

A great king should rather be a dog that killeth clean, than a cat that patteth and sporteth with his prey.

Forth into the quiet evening, where above the smooth downs the wind was lulled to sleep in the vast silent spaces of the sky.

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.

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.

Are ye ta'en with the swindle or the turn-sickness? Or are ye out of your wits?

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.

Surely time past is gone by like a shadow.

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?