Arm of the Sphinx (The Books of Babel, #2)

by Josiah Bancroft

he was at the point in his career where all other men were fools, the business was foolish, and the pay fit only for imbeciles.

that happiness is a symptom of ignorance.”

“History has nothing to do with what happened.”

History is a love letter to tyrants written in the blood of the overrun, the forgotten, the expunged!”

What good does it do to punish a man who so stubbornly punishes himself?”

“I think you’re confusing hope with stubbornness,

Machines do not serve us; we serve them. If they all vanished from the earth tomorrow, our race would carry on. But when we remove our hand from the machine, it dies.”

People who could sit in a chair, open a book, and just think themselves around the world were magicians as far as she was concerned.

The man or woman who is rarely lost, rarely discovers anything new.

There is little in the world more curative than a picnic. Some call for doctors and tonics when they fall ill. I call for friends and wine. ‘But’ you say, ‘What if you are really dying?’ Of course I am! We all are! The question is, gentle reader, in these uncertain times, would you rather be a patient or a picnicker?

In a thousand years, when the last human work was taken over by an automatic engine, would it conclude the liberation or the enslavement of the race?

These were his imperfections, and having mastered them, he would not trade them for the world.

I was having this argument with myself, of course, and yet somehow I still managed to lose.

I must forgive myself. I must beg the pardons that I owe. And I must decide to make my life more than a tribute to past failures.