Lord Of Light Quotes
"He whose desires have been throttled, who is independent of root, whose pasture is emptiness — signless and free — his path is as unknowable as that of birds across the heavens."
"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam."
"Silence, though, could. Therefore, there was mystery about him."
"It was in the season of the rains... It was well into the time of the great wetness... It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up."
"Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but the machine had been built and was operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen, of the Celestial City."
"Despite his fall from favor, Yama was still deemed mightiest of the artificers."
"How he would settle this matter with the Lords of Karma was his own affair, though none doubted that when the time came he would find a way."
"There is a break in the cloud cover, to the west," he said.
"We've hooked our fish. Out of Nirvana and into the lotus, he comes."
"I am nothing," replied the other. "A leaf caught in a whirlpool, perhaps. A feather in the wind..."
"Now I just want to sleep the sleep of ages, to know again the Great Rest, the perpetual bliss, to hear the songs the stars sing on the shores of the great sea."
"He has not yet fully returned, though he wears a body, walks upon human feet, talks as we do. His thought is still beyond our ken."
"Let there be no rhetorical questions between us."
"All my work, all our efforts for over half a century."
"When you reach the wall you can back no farther."
"Names are not important. To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important."
"No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words."
"The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma."
"To struggle against those who are mighty among dreamers and are mighty for ill, or ugliness, is not to struggle for that which the sages have taught us to be meaningless in terms of Samsara or Nirvana, but rather it is to struggle for the symmetrical dreaming of a dream, in terms of the rhythm and the point, the balance and the antithesis which will make it a thing of beauty."
"I shall tear these stars from out the heavens and hurl them in the faces of the gods, if this be necessary."
"I am very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar."
"The rod of Trimurti still falls upon the backs of men."
"One can always use blessings, especially a seaman."
"A Master, too, could have upon him an old body, but he would not—any more than he would remain a dog for very long."
"Your brains will not be probed. The Masters will be advised to serve you quickly and well. A flying machine will be dispatched to convey you to Heaven."
"It bears a bit of thinking," said Sam. "I'm quite fond of this world, though it wallows in an age of darkness."
"I consider such indecision presumptuous," said Brahma, "when one has just been made such an offer."
"Sam, you are an impossible haggler! Who else would keep me waiting while his immortality hangs in the balance?"
"I know, and perhaps I should also, were our positions reversed. But if I were God and you were me, I do believe I would extend a moment's merciful silence while a man makes a major decision regarding his life."
"I take it from this that you are an Accelerationist?"
"No," said Sam, "simply an inquirer. I am curious, that's all, as to the reasons."
"They are our children, by our long-dead First bodies, and second, and third and many after—and so, ours is the parents' responsibility toward them."
"It seems you are drawing a mighty fine line at that point, Brahma."
"You talk as if we desire perpetually this burden of godhood, as if we seek to maintain a dark age that we may know forever the wearisome condition of our enforced divinity!"
"Because you said what you thought too quickly, without thinking a second time."
"I am not a fool," said the prince, "and now I have the power to enforce my orders."
"In a word," said Sam, "yes. What of the pray-o-mat which squats before this very Temple? Is it on par, culturally, with a chariot?"
"Our major risk at this point," said the physician, "is the Shan. Will he be recognized?"
"Good-bye, good Hawkana," said the prince. "I shalt bear, as always, good report of your lodgings to all whom I meet about the land."
"Then I owe my life to the fact that you owe me yours. Let us consider the life-owing balanced."
"I have heard your words," he said, "and they have filled me with a kind of joy. They have shown me another way to salvation, a way which I feel to be superior to the one I previously followed."
"It is too late now. I have started something which you cannot undo. Too many have heard the ancient words."
"When you received your enlightenment, before you began your teaching, was it like a rush of fire and the roaring of water and you everywhere and a part of everything—the clouds and the trees, the animals in the forest, all people, the snow on the mountaintop and the bones in the field?"
"I see now why once you said that all things come to you. To have brought such a doctrine into the world—I can see why the gods were envious."
"No bird shall sing, nor snake slither here! It shall be barren and stark, a place of rocks and shifting sand! Not a spear of grass shall ever be upraised from here against the sky!"
"Life is full of betrayals," replied the other, before he struck, "By opposing you now and in this manner, I also betray the teachings of my new master."
"None sing hymns to breath," said Yama. "But, oh to be without it!"
"Gifts are unnecessary, for he takes what he wants."
"It is told how the Lord of Light descended into the Well of the Demons, to make there a bargain with the chief of the Rakasha."
"Therefore, one thinks what is proper, true, and good, and what is improper, false, and depraved. Thus the mind is touched by evil."
"His hand fell upon the pressure plate, moved slowly through a series of gestures. There was a musical sound from within the door as his hand left the plate."
"A rush of warm air emerged from the opening at his back."
"He was now in the midst of a vast blackness shot through with the flames of his torch."
"Beyond that edge was what appeared to be a bottomless pit."
"After what seemed an age and a half, he sighted a tiny flicker of light far below him, hanging in midair."
"Free me, master, and I will lay the world at thy feet!"
"The floor slanted abruptly, and after a hundred paces the ceiling was so high as to be invisible."
"But its steady, winding slant bespoke the fact that there was purpose and pattern to its existence."
"To his left was the wall. To his right there was nothing."
"It became cherry-red as he approached, and when he stood before it, it was the blue of a sapphire's heart."
"I look upon the flows of energy which are your real being—not the flesh that masks them."
"I did that which had to be done, to preserve my own species."
"There is no such thing as an impenetrable dome."
"He rested, and a babble of voices filled his mind—promising, tempting, pleading."
"If you persist," he stated, "Siddhartha shall grow angry, and you will lose the one chance at freedom which you really do possess."
"Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure."
"His hell was a many-colored place, somewhat mitigated only by the cold blue blaze of a scholar's intellect."
"He considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck."
"He did not pause to consider the pain, but struck again, as a spearman strikes into the darkened burrow of a fearsome beast."
"I am a man who occasionally aspires to things beyond the belly and the phallus."
"It is because I am a man who has set out to do a thing, and you are now blocking my way."
"Then lift your curse, Binder, and I will depart this very day."
"You have bound yourself. It is you who broke our pact."
"But a different strangeness had entered the palace."
"How confident they are of their power," said Taraka, "to send only one!"
"Whatever he did would result in both victory and defeat, a success and a failure."
"Know then, that as we existed together in the same body and I partook of your ways, not always unwillingly, the road we followed was not one upon which all the traffic moved in a single direction."
"It was a slow thing this time, and it was in a palace where demons walked as servants that he woke up."
"It held that special beauty that belongs to the highest orders of weapons, requiring function to make it complete."
"Almost halfway down. He widened the trail with his flames. He runs upon it now, as if it were a roadway. He burn obstacles. He makes a clear path."
"I can't take off cold. It has to warm up. Also, this instrument board is trickier than I'd thought."
"I go to slow them," said the Rakasha, and vanished as he had come.
"Do not move—Sam! Demon!" he cried, above the roar of the engines; and as he spoke, his lenses clicked red and he smiled.
"Short circuit, eh?" said Sam, and hit him across the throat.
"You live for purposes of keeping an appointment made many years ago in Mahartha," said Yama.
"Perhaps you can try recouping your losses. We're halfway to Heaven."
"My occupational therapist told me to specialize in lost causes."
"Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists."
"The wilderness came to the edge of the City and stopped. It was forbidden to enter there, just as the City kept to its bounds."
"I once thought you more than passing fond of her yourself."
"You are a bomb-throwing anarchist, a hairy-eyed revolutionary."
"Then put him out of your mind and lock the door."
"Better to incorporate than struggle to extirpate?"
"He rides a cycle of mighty days, and he represents the last great schism among the gods."
"Then let us adjourn to my Pavilion of Joys and discuss the matter fully."
"It is said, sir, that by your piping you can charm the most fearsome of beasts."
"Lady, you are cruel," said Krishna. "Such is life."
"They came. Out of the sky, riding on the polar winds, across the seas and the land, they came."
"It is difficult to be the oldest youthgod in the business."
"'The senses are horses and objects the roads they travel,' said the voice."