Hard To Be A God Quotes
"One can retreat from the ambiguities of the real world into the greenwood, where the demarcation between right and wrong is clear."
"In such fantastical cities, shadows abound and good doesn’t always prevail."
"It’s a common observation that all science fiction novels say as much about the time of their composition as they do about the future."
"Literacy, literacy is the source of it all, my brothers!"
"Hang them all, my brothers! You know what I’d do? I’d ask them straight out: Can you read? Off to the gallows!"
"What a wonderful world. What a merry world. Everybody jokes. And everybody’s jokes are the same."
"That’s how it always is. A careful probing, a wary exchange of cryptic parables."
"We don’t invent a thing, that’s all nonsense."
"We only say we invent things. Actually, it was all invented a long time ago."
"What does it matter that it’s flammable if you can drink it?"
"The universe has thousands of planets where we haven’t come yet, where history is taking its course."
"To sully your soul, to become hardened, is the worst thing."
"The enemy of the king is the literate dreamer, the literate skeptic, the literate nonbeliever!"
"We do not need smart people. We need loyal people."
"Blind faith in the infallibility of the laws, unquestioning obedience to these laws, and also everyone vigilantly watching everyone else."
"What won't a man do in memory of his father!"
"There aren't many petitions written nowadays, noble don. Some people think that asking is pointless, while others expect that in the near future they'll be able to take without asking."
"True, said Rumata. Well, here are two more gold pieces. Take good care of him."
"What would the noble don like? Weed? Snuff? Girls?"
"Powerless and incompetent, He lowers his weak hands, Not knowing where the dragon's heart is. And whether the dragon has one."
"I hired a housekeeper. Her name is Kira. She will stay upstairs, with me."
"It's just my nerves. My nerves and the tension of the last couple of days... But mostly, it's the feeling of a shadow creeping over us."
"Like a broken-winged swan calls wistfully to a star ... I was so lonely."
"Let me lie at your feet ... like a greyhound lies at the feet of a nude and indifferent beauty ..."
"We are immediately saddling our horses and riding to Bau."
"When I'm here, I keep wanting to order Estorian wine!"
"He who doesn't drink in the morning is a fool!"
"He'll turn out well. How much do you want for him?"
"You don't understand at all, my friend. You're too young and flighty."
"You probably even get pleasure out of looking at these whores."
"These are cows, my friend—at best these are cows."
"He who tolerates them because he's scared is a coward!"
"It's been a long time since I've been in Arkanar, my noble friend!"
"I beat up the gray scum whenever I have the chance!"
"If the Experiment demands it, you must become an animal!"
"I'll try to improve. We'll learn how to become pigs."
"How lucky that I didn't have my fighting sword that time!"
"All he does is make promises. He promised to eradicate insubordination, and insubordination keeps growing."
"I’m very sick. Everything hurts. I want to retire to rest."
"You only need to give the order, and the best healer in the empire will be in the palace in half an hour."
"Being aware of your truly unbearable suffering and bearing in mind the debt my family has to the Crown, I sent for the highly learned healer Doctor Budach from Irukan."
"I came here to love people, to help them unbend, see the sky."
"Nothing can help me now, because I sincerely hate and despise them."
"I wonder whether the inhabitants feel something horrible looming over them tonight?"
"Two hundred thousand people! To a visitor from Earth, they all had something in common."
"They were too passive and too ignorant. Their slavery was the result of passivity and ignorance, and passivity and ignorance again and again breeds slavery."
"If you destroy this vitamin, society will rot, and social scurvy will begin: the muscles will go weak, the eyes will lose their sharpness, the teeth will fall out."
"He was calm and content, but a prickly, bony pain was sitting on an adjacent hillock."
"I’m the one who’s alive, he thought. They’re talking about me. I’m the one blinking my peepers."
"I could buy all of Arkanar, but I’m not interested in garbage dumps."
"To cut down such a glorious offspring of such a glorious family! It would be a crime, if it were not brought about by the exigencies of state."
"People are prone to making mistakes. Perhaps I’m wrong and the goals I aspire to are not the ones worthy of the diligent and selfless work I’ve been doing."
"I’m neither the devil nor God, I’m Rumata of Estor, a merry noble gentleman, burdened with various whims and prejudices, and accustomed to freedom in every way."
"The cold-blooded brutality of those who slaughter, and the cold-blooded meekness of those who are slaughtered."
"These people’s souls are full of rot, and each hour of meek waiting contaminates them even more."
"Of course, my noble don," Rumata answered, skillfully avoiding the embrace.
"It’s rum!" declared Don Tameo. "Real rum from the metropole. I paid a gold piece for it."
"How strange," Don Tameo said, closing the flask, "I’ve never been here before."
"Don Reba has always amazed me," said Don Tameo.
"What a horrible stench," Rumata said with feeling.
"But how easy it is to breathe in the reborn Arkanar!"
"Take off your hat," the official said in a colorless voice, without looking up from his papers.
"No one has any privileges before the Order," the official said in the same colorless voice.
"The privilege of the family of Keu is to wear a hat in the presence of the king himself," Don Keu proclaimed proudly.
"Down that corridor," said the official in a colorless voice, "the lashes on the right, the boot on the left."
"I see no reason why even a noble don shouldn’t receive a couple of lashes in the name of His Grace!"
"In the name of the Lord," Rumata said significantly, looking over his shoulder.
"The world is constantly changing, Doctor Budach," said Rumata. "We know of a time when there were no kings."
"Evil is ineradicable. No man is able to decrease its quantity in the world."
"Perfection looks different in the eyes of a higher power than in mine."
"Then, Lord, wipe us off the face of the planet and create us anew in a more perfect form."
"You shouldn’t have come down from the sky. Go back to where you came from. You’re only doing us harm."
"There’s no such thing as half a friend. Half a friend—that’s always half an enemy."
"You try to make things better and they just get worse."
"Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures."
"All that is precious to us must be either far away on Earth or inside us. So that no one can take it away and use it as a hostage."
"Bright, pure souls who don’t know hatred, who reject cruelty. Victims. Pointless victims."
"Our Soviet regime is kind, our party is kind and humane. We must do honest, good work, then everything will be all right."