Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious of the power to destroy.

Washington Irving,  The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

[I]n a large house, formerly a house of state ... in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. 

Charles Dickens, Bleak House

We must not rivet ourselves so fast to our humours and complexions: our chiefest sufficiency is to know how to apply ourselves to divers employments.
 
The principal use of reading to me is, that by various objects it rouses my reason, and employs my judgment, not my memory. 

Montaigne

Narrative is a lie... it sustains its power from a quite illogical juxtaposition of events, and perceived chain of causality- it is simply seditious, and cannot be trusted!

Chris Deliso, in the yet unpublished Third Emperor of California

These are the times we live in, in which men hide their truths, perhaps even from themselves, and live in lies, until the lies reveal those truths in ways impossible to foretell.

Salman Rushdie, The Golden House