The Worm Ouroboros QUOTES

2 " Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o'erleaping actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is become for me a vision only and a mock-show. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

4 " Surely time past is gone by like a shadow. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

6 " These things hath Fate brought to pass, and we be but Fate's whipping-tops bandied what way she will. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

8 " But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? . . . Who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

10 " with cunning colubrine and malice viperine and sleights serpentine "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

12 " Us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

14 " The sun stooped to the western waves, entering his bath of blood-red fire. He sank, and all the ways were darkened. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

16 " Surely... the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning's fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn: which if their large philosophy question not if it be a bridal sheet or a shroud, hath not this unpolicied calm his justification ever in the returning year, and is it not an instance to laugh our carefulness out of fashion? Of us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

18 " Tenderly he drew on his lambswool gloves, and shivered a little; for the breath of that desert blew snell and frore and there seemed a shadow in the air southward, for all it was bright and gentle weather below whence they were come. Yet albeit his frail body quailed, even so were his spirits within him raised with high and noble imaginings as he stood on the lip of that rocky cliff. The cloudless vault of heaven; the unnumbered laughter of the sea; that quiet cove beneath, and those ships of war and that army camping by the ships; the emptiness of the blasted wolds to southward, where every rock seemed like a dead man’s skull and every rank tuft of grass hag-ridden; the bearing of those lords of Demonland who stood beside him, as if nought should be of commoner course to them pursuing their resolve than to turn their backs on living land and enter those regions of the dead; these things with a power as of a mighty music made Gro’s breath catch in his throat and the tear spring in his eye. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros

20 " Forth into the quiet evening, where above the smooth downs the wind was lulled to sleep in the vast silent spaces of the sky. "

― E.R. Eddison , The Worm Ouroboros