Avram Davidson

Things oughtn’t to be the way they are, altogether. But letting a madman burn down the barn is no way to improve them.

— Avram Davidson

Tell him you’ll pay any fine within reason. That dragon-cod can’t even read his own name unless it’s written in gold ink.

— Avram Davidson

There was an inn...which kept no register of...a number of seamstresses and tailors who lacked time and place and perhaps inclination to weave the cloths they cut and sewed, depending instead on the activities of those who preferred not to vex the original owners with the tiresome bookkeeping inseparable from purchase.

— Avram Davidson

“How is your new woman? Your new-est one, I sh’d say.”“Yeh-es,” Jeff nodded, judiciously. “But some of ’m’s got more of it than others.”

— Avram Davidson

Experience may be a bitter teacher, but She is a good one.

— Avram Davidson

The instructor-Na has observed in the Na 14 tendencies toward an archaic and dangerous quality to which the ancients gave the name personal ambition.

— Avram Davidson

Life continued, the wheel turned, the earth moved, and even death—that delightful biological necessity—was an aspect of life.

— Avram Davidson

He who has slain one, will he abstain from slaying many?

— Avram Davidson

The short man was all of a piece, but there was nothing reassuring in this; it was a piece of the same material that too many high school principals, boys’ camp directors, and military and naval officers are made of: a texture or quality often dignified by the description, “ability to command”—the desire to bully, override, bear down—the capacity to do so by virtue of office—the habit of having done so for a long time and the confidence of continuing to do so for a long time.

— Avram Davidson

“The fact that you know the questions,” he said, a mite grudgingly, “tends to make me think you might really know the answers.”

— Avram Davidson

“Follow me, men! I’m right behind you!”

— Avram Davidson

I can tell you that only a fool destroys useful things merely because he doesn’t like them.

— Avram Davidson

No greed was comparable to the appeal of self-sacrifice.

— Avram Davidson

A querulous whine that was almost a question was succeeded by a deep gobble that was almost an answer.

— Avram Davidson

“Drew a knife on us,” one muttered, with the sullen rage of the bully who feels wronged when resisted.

— Avram Davidson

Hmm...hmm. A stag hunt. To what elaborate lengths the equestrian classes go in order to draw out the simple business of butchering venison.

— Avram Davidson

Where there is no bread, there is no philosophy.

— Avram Davidson

“There may be someone here who knows less about all this than I do,” Clemens said, “but I can’t imagine who.”

— Avram Davidson

Surely you’ll at least see the Temple? Respect all religions, is my motto, believe in none. Sensible principle. Still, you know, must say, after all, two thousand beautiful priestesses! All ready, willing, able—and I must say—dextrous!— to do their best to inspire male worshippers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!

— Avram Davidson

Rumor, I fear, is scarcely as accurate as he is rapid.

— Avram Davidson

But the Red Man denied that time, though it must always be paid for, could always be paid for in money.

— Avram Davidson

The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect.

— Avram Davidson

It is not in the nature of any people that it should willingly endure being ruled by another people, whether it is ruled ill or ruled well.

— Avram Davidson

Sorcery works against Nature, magic works with it.

— Avram Davidson

These precautions, perhaps because they had been taken, proved unnecessary.

— Avram Davidson

And then in that, admittedly magnificent, abrupt moment you saw what I concede without argument was the face of rather an attractive wench, and—Zeus! you weren’t thinking, man—you were simply reacting. It wasn’t your heart, it was your codpiece that the impulse came from!

— Avram Davidson

Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return.

— Avram Davidson

Everything meant something, still, some meanings were revealed sooner than others. And that some were seemingly never revealed in no way disproved the fact.

— Avram Davidson

It is not a very interesting night market, anyway. No wonderful things are sold there, though often one wonders, next day, how one could have bought them...

— Avram Davidson

Clearly this was no time to ask if they should first define their terms. Nor, for that matter, had Socrates had to define the bowl of hemlock.

— Avram Davidson

It had not been precisely a fruitful meeting, but it had been a long one.

— Avram Davidson

She spun, as a matter of form and status alone, her woollen yarn and her oft-breaking thread. What else did she spin? he wondered. And the answer, not spoken aloud, was, a web.To hold him fast indeed.

— Avram Davidson

It’s not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It’s merely a matter of who gets caught.

— Avram Davidson

It was but that, seeing him and so imagining that something about him was otherwise, automatically they feared him.

— Avram Davidson

Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead,Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread.

— Avram Davidson

It was a distinction without a difference.

— Avram Davidson

Suppose Sisyphus to have been acquitted his need of forever toiling up his hill in Hell, would he have made the last journey in joy? Or would mere fatigue have extinguished all other emotion, as a torch extinguished in a sconce?

— Avram Davidson