The Fall of Babel (The Books of Babel #4)

by Josiah Bancroft

Never was a line untangled by heaves and tugs. An unwanted knot requires a flexible stratagem to undo. One must give a little here to make some progress there. So it is with most of life’s snarls.

Some of my crew are convinced an old rope will continue to hold purely because it has held for so long. As if a ship was buoyed by precedent. As if the past promised a future.

When he was gone, would she believe he’d considered her a pest and a burden? How had he sacrificed so much of himself and still given so little?

Trust no man with a secret unless its preservation will enrich himself as well. The soul of discretion is not integrity but stock.

“Life begins in violence. It always starts that way. But it does not have to persist so. I can tell you that the cruelest confluence is when society is in its adolescence and technology in its nascency. That pairing of uncompromising gears, gnashing together at two different speeds, is a meat grinder. The longer it goes, the freer the blood flows. If your race survives this period, I think you will have something of value to contribute to the rest of us. And if you do not, you will join the ranks of the beautiful extinct, those who ran too fast for their bones to bear, those whose plumage was too bright to hide.”

Pilgrims are encouraged to remember that the principal consumer of sheep is not wolves but shepherds.

When you think little of yourself, everyone else’s opinion of you becomes more important than your own. I hope you don’t slouch your way through your life, trying to hide the greatness in you for fear of putting someone else off.