Quotes from Lord Dunsany

For he had acquired a lore in his youth which taught him ever to avoid the aged when merry plans were afoot; for the aged would come with their wisdom and slowness of thought, and other plans would be made, and there would be, at least, delay.

The gardener hath gathered up this autumn's leaves. Who shall see them again, or who wot of them? And who shall say what hath befallen in the days of long ago?

Rodriguez, in addition to the pleasant glow in the mind that comes from a generous action, had another feeling that gives all of us pleasure, a feeling of increased safety; for while he had the ring upon his finger and Morano went unpaid the thought could not help occurring, even to a generous mind, that one of these windy nights Morano might come for his wages.

There are loves that are each one the romance of a lifetime. Such a love must illumine the whole of a man's memories and light up all his years. It goes down time like lightning through the air. The length of it in hours is not to be measured.

Who knows what brings fortune, since we cannot see the end?

The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man.

Nothing is unobtainable to the sword.

If there be some harder, better way to salvation than to follow that which we believe to be good, then are we all damned.

The years are going by us like huge birds, whom Doom and Destiny and the schemes of God have frightened up out of some old gray marsh.

And the dawn grew strangely and slowly over those unwonted lands, pouring upon them the colours that day after day our daffodils, and day after day our wild roses, through all the weeks of their season, drink deep with voluptuous assemblies in utterly silent riot.

Rodriguez seldom concerned himself with the past, holding that the future is all we can order the scheme of. And maybe even here he was wrong.

He did not seem like a fallen angel now. His spell had stopped. He seemed like a professor who had forgotten the theme of his lecture, while the class waits. For Morano was holding up the sign of the cross. You have betrayed me! shouted the Slave of Orion. Master, Morano said, it was always good against magic.

But the lonely fancy that had not fact to feed on, nor the fancy of any other for fellowship, was for its loneliness mad.

and as the sea wind blew on that high and lonely place, there began to slip away from the voter's mind the meaningless phrases that had crowded it long - thumping majority - victory in the fight - terminological inexactitudes - and the smell of paraffin lamps dangling in classrooms, and quotations taken from ancient speeches because the words were long.

I heard a cry and awoke and found that I had dreamed, and looking out of my house into the street I found that a flash of lightning had killed a child. Then I knew that the gods still lived.

He asked her what she was doing there, on the heath with her broom in the evening. Sweeping the world, she said. And Alveric wondered what rejected things she was sweeping away from the world, with grey dust mournfully turning over and over as it drifted across our fields, going slowly into the darkness that was gathering beyond our coasts. Why are you sweeping the world, Mother Witch? he said. There's things in the world that ought not to be here, said she.

Then on the River I saw the dream-built ship of the god Yoharneth-Lehai, whose great prow lifted grey into the air above the River of Silence. Her timbers were olden dreams dreamed long ago, and poets' fancies made her tall, straight masts, and her rigging was wrought out of the people's hopes. Upon her deck were rowers with dream-made oars, and the rowers were the people of men's fancies, and princes of old story and people who had died, and people who had never been.

The lonely fancy that had not fact to feed on, nor the fancy of any other for fellowship, was for its loneliness mad.

How would some townsman feel who loved his city, and knew that a band of farmers with their ploughs threatened his very pavements and would tear his high buildings down? As he would feel, fearing that turnips would thrive where his busses ran, so I felt and feared for Lisronagh.

Lest any idle person might think that I have had time to write plays during the last few years I may mention that the first act of The Tents of the Arabs was written on September 3rd, and the second act on September 8th, 1910. The first and second acts of The Laughter of the Gods were written on January 29th, and the third act on February 2nd and 3rd, 1911. A Night at an Inn was written on January 17th, 1912, and The Queen's Enemies on April 19, 20, 21, 24, 28, 29, 1913.

Fame as she walked at evening in a city saw the painted face of Notoriety flaunting beneath a gas-lamp, and many kneeled unto her in the dirt of the road. Who are you? Fame said to her. I am Fame, said Notoriety. Then Fame stole softly away so that no one knew she had gone. And Notoriety presently went forth and all her worshippers rose and followed after, and she led them, as was most meet, to her native Pit.

Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the east there lies a desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun.

And the night deepened over the River Yann, a night all white with stars. And with the night there rose the helmsman's song.

THE OLD MAN with a hammer and the one-eyed man with a spear