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

by Josiah Bancroft

The difficulty with a disguise is that it must be worn for some time before it hangs credibly upon the shoulders. But if worn for too long, a costume becomes comfortable, natural. A man always in disguise must take care lest he become the disguise. —The Stone Cloud’s Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd

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

I’m suspicious of men who think it better to revise an entire society than to reform their own manner of address. A constructive revolution is as impossible as an architectural fire.