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Fourth Mansions QUOTES

Fourth Mansions QUOTES

1 " It is a southern river town with some pretensions of being a city... And like every southern river town it has its canker....
The capital has its own orneriness, as pervading as the others, but it isn't the same sort. It never was a fun town. It is not a robust sin town. Its fleshpots have no real juice in them. Its vices are effete and heterodox, and its moral rot is a dry one. Though its people have come from all parts, yet they are not all sorts of people. They are very much of one sort. The ethic climate here nurtures an ancient, evil, shriveled thing. It is of the inhabitants of this city that the prophet spoke:
Of those who do not have the faith
And will not have the fun. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

2 " If you were told that a new race of giant snails was going to take over the earth and abolish mankind, how would you react?"
"I'd react by considering my informant and questioning where he got his information. If he had even the slightest snail-horn of information, I'd follow it out. I'd try my mightiest to find out whether there really was a new race of giant snails trying to take over. I'd examine all the evidence my informant could give me, and all that I could invent myself, always with an eye as to how I could turn it to account. I'd consider the treatment -- quizzical, facetious, sensational, or who-knows-after-all? -- even before I had anything to treat. If there were any real evidence, Doctor, i'd really follow it out. I can see the banner on my feature piece, On the Track of the Giant Snail, in my mind's-eye now. Believe me, I'd try to be the first to interview the snail leader."
"You would actually spend time on such a report, Mr. Foley?"
"Yes. I may SPEND TIME on that very thing whenever I'm through with what I'm on now. There's bound to be an interesting story in it; if not of the giant snails themselves, then perhaps a story of a man who believed in giant snails. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

3 " There was supervised recreation. This is the original contradiction of terms. It was for making suggestions about supervised recreation that the devil was cast into hell; any other account you have heard is false. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

4 " I finally saw the whole conspiracy standing as plain as an elephant in the street; also the conspiracy was admitted to me in great detail by one of the princes of the conspiracy."
"Bad, Smith, very bad."
"If one of the inmates should come to you right now, Doctor, and tell you it was raining outside, you'd say 'Bad, very bad', and make damning marks on his record."
" That's probably true. It's an automatic response with me. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

5 " And at almost the identical time two men were murdered. One of them was a Great Liberal Statesman who was actually a shoddy phony, and one was a Well-Beloved Conservative Leader whose own family couldn't stand him. There was a further distortion. The reports of both murders were out slightly before they happened, and partisans of both men had begun to gather.
And just previous to the riots, an army detachment had crossed over from Virginia to put down the riots. The military could not find the reported corpses strewing the sidewalks. Wisely they waited. They were only a little bit early.
In other sections, students attacked soldiers. The students always averaged about ten years older than the soldiers. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

6 " I know how it was two years ago, Hardcrow. And I know a little about how it is now, though the worst is kept from us peasants. But how has it become worse while getting better? What has happened in between?"
"It was a series of unprecedented advances that somehow left us far in arrears, Foley; a program of wise and probably perfect moves that left us in a stupid situation; a whole array of undoubted improvements that has nearly reduced us to a shambles. Nobody knows just what has happened. And all are trying, on the advice of the best minds available, to restore some sanity to our position."
"On the advice of the same best minds available which engineered the unprecedented advances, Hardcrow? The wise and probably perfect moves, and the array of undoubted improvements? "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

7 " Overlark is a brilliant man in the Humanist Tradition."
"At the name of which even buzzards gag. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

8 " It has been said that heresy is the revenge of a forgotten truth. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

9 " The New Prophets began to preach by torchlight as though the latter days had come. It was the younger Pliny, those many centuries ago, who mentioned that in times of turmoil men with beards will appear instantly, when in all Rome there had not been bearded men before the moment of strife. The younger Pliny had lived in a shaved age; he believed that the bearded men who appear suddenly are wraiths or portents, and not men at all. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

10 " You believe, in one of your theories, that we're in control of the world. We aren't. But we have been, and we will be whenever we wish. It's a day you will fear to see, that we come fully awake again. And we do come awake now. We will regain the world. Certain later interlopers have for some time ruled heaven and earth. Now we come back -- ruthlessly."
"Don't you believe the others also have rights?"
"The others have had the run of their rights long enough. They are the interlopers, and it's time that the ancient line is restored. --Oh, Foley, I misunderstood you completely; that's always the difficulty of conversing with infants. You mean PEOPLE. You mean do people have any rights? Oh no, I don't believe that people have any rights. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions

11 " After we were men we were tribal gods. We each have our tribe that we sometimes inspire and that we follow with interest. My own is a diaspora tribe that's older than the Jews and has forgotten its name; sometimes it's called the Intelligentsia. This is a people and a race, though it's forgotten that it is."
"It's no wonder that the Intelligentsia is inhibited from becoming intelligent. "

― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions