Quotes by Lord Dunsany

And Jabim is the Lord of broken things, who sitteth behind the house to lament the things that are cast away. And there he sitteth lamenting the broken things until the worlds be ended, or until someone cometh to mend the broken things. Or sometimes he sitteth by the rivers edge to lament the forgotten things that drift upon it.A kindly god is Jabim, whose heart is sore if anything be lost.

There is indeed a great deal of futility amongst the human race which we do not commonly see, for it all forms part of our illusion; but let a man be much annoyed by something that others do, so that he is separated from them and has to leave them, and looks back at what they are doing, and hell see at once all manner of whimsical absurdities that he had not noticed before; and Ramon Alonzo in the shade of his oak, waiting for the noon to go by, grew very contemptuous of the attitude that the world took up towards shadows.

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 peoples hopes. Upon her deck were rowers with dream-made oars, and the rowers were the people of mens fancies, and princes of old story and people who had died, and people who had never been.

I should have shouted No and left him. But at least said Satan in the deeps of my mind, know what the temptation is before you do anything hastily.

It is very seldom that the same man knows much of science and about the things that were known before science came.

Everyones future is in reality uncertain and full of unknown treasures from which all may draw unguessed prizes.