Lord Dunsany: 124 books

Then the King spake dolefully in the Hall of Kings, and said: “May I not find at last the gods, and must it be that I may not look in Their faces at the last to see whether They be kindly? They that have sent me on my earthward journey I would greet on my returning, if not as a King coming again...

The men of Yarnith hold that nothing began until Yarni Zai uplifted his hand. Yarni Zai, they say, has the form of a man but is greater and is a thing of rock. When he uplifted his hand all the rocks that wandered beneath the Dome, by which name they call the sky, gathered together around Yarni Zai....

The Wild Things are somewhat human in appearance, only all brown of skin and barely two feet high. Their ears are pointed like the squirrel’s, only far larger, and they leap to prodigious heights. They live all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes, but at night they come up and dance. Each...

There was also another prophet and his name was Shaun, who had such reverence for the gods of Old that he became able to discern their forms by starlight as they strode, unseen by others, among men. And in the city Shaun's followers built three temples. The one on the right was a temple for the young,...

I have poured out dark wine to them, I have offered them fat, indeed, I have often offered them savoury things. I have said: The Queen should not have enemies; she is too delicate, too fair. But they will not understand.

Thus passed away in the hour of her iniquities before Annolith, in the two thousand and thirty-second year of her being, in the six thousand and fiftieth year of the building of the World, Babbulkund, City of Marvel, sometime called by those that hated her City of the Dog, but hourly mourned in Araby...

Despite the advertisements of rival firms, it is probable that every tradesman knows that nobody in business at the present time has a position equal to that of Mr. Nuth.

Those clever ones are the beggars to make a muddle. Their plans are clever enough, but they don’t work, and then they make a mess of things much worse than you or me.

And though I had seen him go forth with his terrific spear, and mighty elephant-hunter though he was, yet his was a fearful quest for I knew that it was none other than to avenge Perdóndaris by slaying that monster with the single tusk who had overthrown it suddenly in a day.

So I came down through the wood on the bank of Yann and found, as had been prophesied, the ship Bird of the River about to loose her cable. The captain sat cross-legged upon the white deck with his scimitar lying beside him in its jeweled scabbard, and the sailors toiled to spread the nimble sails...

They lost three pawns almost straight off, then a knight, and shortly after a bishop; they were playing in fact the famous Three Sailors' Gambit.

“How can I ever thank you?” he said to me then. “We have been thirteen at table for thirty years and I never dared to insult them because I had wronged them all, and now you have done it and I know they will never dine here again.”

And the Book of the Knowledge of the gods tells further how the day on which Pompeides found the gods shall be kept for ever as a fast until the evening and called the Fast of the Departing, but in the evening shall a feast be held which is named the Feast of the Relenting, for on that evening Sarnidac pitied the whole world and tarried.

The Essential Fantasy Collection, a collection of classic fantasy fiction in one book:Four Arthurian RomancesThe Book of WonderThe Gods of PeganaTales of WonderUnhappy Far Off ThingsRobin HoodLegends of King ArthurIrish Fairy Tales