Mark Hodder > Quotes

“Indeed. I have often thought that when a man selects one word over another he often reveals far more of himself than he intended.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“Here lies the body of Colonel Cornell’s. The rest of the fellow, I fancy, in hell is.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“Every time we are faced with a choice, and we are faced with them every minute of every day, we make a decision to follow its course into the future. But what of the abandoned options? Are they like unopened doors? Do alternative futures lie beyond them? How far would we wander from the course we have steered were we to go back and, just once, open Door A instead of Door B?”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“Beware of the brains you invade.”
― Mark Hodder, The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

“We all act on what we know, what we see, what we are told and how we feel. The simple fact of the matter is that not a single one of us operates under identical influences. That is why the future is always uncertain.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“But maybe efficiency isn’t all it’s held up to be. Maybe it’s the inefficiencies and mistakes that give us the best impetus to change and grow and improve.”
― Mark Hodder, The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

“Faith requires nothing but blind adherence, whereas knowledge demands the continual apprehension of an ever-expanding body of information. With faith, one can at least claim knowledge without having to do the hard work of acquiring it.”
― Mark Hodder, The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

“Swinburne also straightened. “To monotheism, perhaps. A yearning for the advent of a new paganism. How I rue the One who casts his veil of grey over us, Richard; who bids us contemplate death when all around us are the bright colours and vibrancies of glorious life. We have allowed ourselves to be crushed by a despotic deity who demands of us a lifetime of toil and service and promises in return a harsh judgement for most, and ambiguous rewards only for those who enforce His rule. I place all my hopes in Darwin. His wonderful insight can teach a far greater satisfaction and reassurance than blind faith can offer—a simple pleasure gained from the sheer exuberance and tenacity of existence. The human species should revel in a permanent state of delighted astonishment at this world, but instead we allow ourselves to be yoked to a tiresome and unyielding fear of it.”
― Mark Hodder, The Return of the Discontinued Man

“I feel Man would be wise to work at correcting his own mistakes instead of waiting for intervention from on high, and should replace faith in an unknowable divine plan with a well-thought-out scheme of his own.”
― Mark Hodder, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“but hated her blinkered Catholicism. Charles Darwin had killed God but she and her family, like so many others, still clung to the delusion.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“A known mistake is better than an unknown truth.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“I want to be a great poet or I am nothing, Richard! To do that I must truly live. And a man can only truly live when Death is his permanent companion.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

“The acquisition of knowledge has become too intimidating a prospect for them, so they shun it in favour of faith.”
― Mark Hodder, The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

“Everything Life places in your path is an opportunity.
No matter how difficult.
No matter how upsetting.
No matter how impenetrable.
No matter how you judge it.
An opportunity.”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack