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

by Josiah Bancroft

Civilization is like sunshine. Spread it about, and the world blooms with culture, innovation, and fraternity. But focus it all upon one spot, and mankind scorches the earth like a ray from a magnifying glass.

Surely, it was better to go forward into ruin than backward into rot.

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

We are, each of us, a multitude. I am not the man I was this morning, nor the man of yesterday. I am a throng of myself queued through time. We are, gentle reader, each a crowd within a crowd.

Familiarity is such a cataract.

the country laborer romanticized for the urban landlord.

When humanity ceases to aspire, it begins to decline. Do you know why the status quo is so tyrannical and nauseating? Because it does not exist! There is no stasis in the world, and certainly not where humans are involved. The status quo is just a pleasing synonym for decay.