Tanith Lee quotes - page 7

The absolute, as I had finally been shown, does not need the accompaniment of pipes and drums. (Tanith Lee)
I woke in the dawn. The plains of the Wilderness were exploding into light. It was the first hour of day, one of the two most beautiful hours of the desert, where sunrise and sunset are the queen and king. View quote
Tanith Lee
Westward and inland there was a form of government, some prince or other sitting on his backside ordering this or that. View quote
Tanith Lee
Superstitious, they did not go after her. They had a robber-god which they worshipped in a cave. His creed declared: ‘For every fifty travelers robbed and slain, let one go free. The gods care for excess in nothing.' View quote
Tanith Lee
Into her shrewd and youthful brain there came an inspiration. It was an inspiration of the sort to set heart banging, teeth jittering, hands cold and mouth dry. It was of the sort which comes only once, and must be hearkened to and acted on-or let go and ever regretted. Lylas chose not to regret. View quote
Tanith Lee
To be dead was a state which played odd tricks on dreams of vengeance. View quote
Tanith Lee
There was strong music in the sky: the music of sunset. In the west, a wall of clear red amber through which the sun went blazing down. The remainder of the sky was smoky rose, a color like a perfume-musk. The earth had given up its tinctures. Heights and depths and long dunes were melting into the air. View quote
Tanith Lee
It is perhaps a fact, that to the truly good, life, and the ways of men, and goodness itself, are very simple things. What to others appeared as her virtuousness, was to her merely her state of being. She did not set out to be good. She was good naturally, as another breathed. Hate and bitterness and envy and despair, those four envenomed serpents gnawing the livers of mankind, could not get in at her. But to herself she was nothing special; only herself to herself. View quote
Tanith Lee
"What can we do?” said they, limping home. "We are only ordinary men.” By which they meant they thought themselves extraordinary enough that their skins must be saved at all costs. View quote
Tanith Lee
You will go to any length, however sumptuous or cataclysmic, in order solely to avoid the words: it appears I am at fault. View quote
Tanith Lee
No, she is cruel and pitiless and indifferent (which we have learned, through her teaching, the gods are to mankind-and indeed, have not the lessons of our lives ceaselessly informed us this was so?). (Tanith Lee)
What have you seen since last you looked on me?” He said, "Misery and want, and fear, and death. I saw a beggar begging for help from a muddy stream. He told me it was as much use to do that as to beg help of heaven. View quote
Tanith Lee
The groaning and the screaming, the prayers-useless and known to be useless-the exhortations, scrabbling attempts at exodus, the burrowings that would yield no safety, the ecstasies of madness and immolation-each and all occurred: the correct paraphernalia of catastrophe. But, seen from the heavens, what was it but a fomentation in a hill of termites? That which is so small cannot be important. View quote
Tanith Lee
Ebriel regarded his adversary. His eyes grew peculiarly lambent, as though he had come to love her. Of course, they were sworn foes; perhaps he had. View quote
Tanith Lee
And Chuz lowered his eyes, his matchless eyes. He, magnificent, a Lord of Darkness, held in his arms now a mortal woman. As Azhrarn had discovered, that was like clasping the tides of the sea, the winds of heaven. How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on. View quote
Tanith Lee
"May the gods take note,” said he, "that it is my kind heart brought me to this predicament.” The gods, of course, did no such thing. View quote
Tanith Lee
But in the mental overcast of that town, such things went rigidly unremarked, save through their irrelevance. For life was only a series of pitfalls, not to be enjoyed or celebrated. The gods chastised pleasure just as they ignored suffering. View quote
Tanith Lee
We are taught that the gods do not care for us,” said Pereban the priest. "Therefore we must seek for guidance in our own selves. View quote
Tanith Lee
And in the manner of this ideal we strive, though even that not too onerously. For piety itself may be used to make a chain about the soul. View quote
Tanith Lee
The gods' inventions are notorious by their errors. View quote
Tanith Lee
Of the rest, nothing further is said, save that lovers love and live and, in due season, as all men must, they also die. And so with Ezail and Chavir who had been Sovaz and Oloru, Azhriaz and Chuz. For such was and is mortal life, mortal death. But for love, who can predict or measure, plot, ascribe, or declare an end. Love is one of the immortals. (Tanith Lee)