Silverlock

Madness is a distrust of reason.

Every man knows he will die; and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of sane being.

I recall thinking that I was stroking toward either the end of all life or the beginning of a new one. Neither possibility stirred me. Every man knows he will die; and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of sane being. I wasn't able to credit my own non-existence any better than the next man; what I had lost was a healthy abhorrence of the state. It had not dropped from me because of any particular shock or misfortune. It had moulted from me year by year, for all of my thirty-five, to leave me naked in apathy.

Everybody has an idea of himself which augments, aggravates, or modifies the actuality.

The steps to degradation are only three: the actuality of the shameful condition, the recognition of the actuality while feeling unable to do anything about it, and then acceptance of it as the normal state of affairs.

Sometimes finish and end don't mean the same thing.