Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

It was quite dark when he went by the towers of Tor, where archers shoot ivory arrows at strangers lest any foreigner should alter their laws, which are bad, but not to be altered by mere aliens.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

I imagine that as one penetrated out from some enormous forest of the tropics, the wild beasts would become fewer, the gloom would lighten, and the horror of the place would slowly lift. Yet as one emerges nearer to the edge of London, and nearer to the beautiful influence of the hills, the houses become uglier, the streets viler, the gloom deepens, the errors of civilisation stand bare to the scorn of the fields.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Indeed when we trace it all back to its origin we find at the beginning of this unhappy story a man who was only an emperor and wished to be something more. He would have ruled the world but has only meddled with it; and his folly has brought misery to millions, and there lies his broken dream on the broken earth.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Once, as Mung went his way athwart the Earth and up and down its cities and across its plains, Mung came upon a man who was afraid when Mung said: “I am Mung!”

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Then said the people to the prophet: “Shall not black hills draw round in some forsaken land, to make a vale-wide cauldron wherein the molten rock shall seethe and roar, and where the crags of mountains shall be hurled upward to the surface and bubble and go down again, that there our enemies may boil for ever?”

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

And cities arose and shed their houses in dust, and ever the desert returned again to its own, and covered over and hid the last of all that had troubled its repose.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

How much do you know?" she said. "Do you know that dreams are illusion?

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

I hope that when London is clean passed away and the defeated fields come back again, like an exiled people returning after a war, they may find some beautiful thing to remind them of it all; because we have loved a little that swart old city.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

What should a man do with the sword of Welleran?

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

I know of the boons that machinery has conferred on men, all tyrants have boons to confer, but service to the dynasty of steam and steel is a hard service and gives little leisure to fancy to flit from field to field.

— Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany