The Fall of Babel

We can cower behind oaths and excuses, but it does not change the fact that many are suffering and dying. Perhaps we are not responsible for the crimes of our fathers, but make no mistake, we are beneficiaries of those crimes, which makes us answerable to its victims.

The reason we study and learn, the reason we take only what we need, is because we have all been given a great gift—the gift of civilization, the gift of understanding, the gift of mastery over our environment—and if we misuse these, if we take these things for granted, the ones who will suffer most are our sons and daughters. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of our ancestors’ labor. We should relish the pudding. But that privilege does not relieve us of our responsibility to be faithful custodians of the world we leave for our children.

The human race will march into the darkness singing songs and telling stories because that is who we are and what we do.

When you think little of yourself, everyone else’s opinion of you becomes more important than your own.

Do you ever wish you could travel back through your life? I do. I wish I could find myself when I was younger, carefree, cocksure, happy—perfectly, entirely happy. But never quite satisfied. I wish I could find that fool and just flog him up and down the street. I took so much for granted.

True conspiracies are inflexible and susceptible to discovery, but imaginary plots are ever evolving and, as a result, invulnerable. That is to say, conspiracies are perishable, paranoia is not.

I grow old in the company of youthful ghosts.

People only read what they already believe to be true, and if they encounter something that seems to disagree with their beliefs, they bend it into agreement, and if it cannot be bent, then they call it a conspiracy and cast it away!

Do not waste the limited resource of your patience on those who think misery a competition. Spendthrifts of self-pity are always miserly the moment empathy is due. —Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, VI. V

I ... I don't know," he said. She had a wide, wondering expression on her face, as if a butterfly had landed on the tip of her nose. Something seemed to crack open inside of him, and behind that barrier, which he had not known was there, he discovered an emptiness that seemed to cry out for exploration, an absence that wanted to be filled. It was like discovering a new floor within a house he'd lived in all his life.

Perhaps we are not responsible for the crimes of our fathers, but make no mistake, we are beneficiaries of those crimes, which makes us answerable to its victims.

He understood that accusations made in wrath drew from the proof of emotions rather than the substance of facts, and as such were incontestable.

The human race will go marching into that conclusive dark, singing our ballads and telling our stories and embellishing our walls with loafing nudes because that is who we really are: creatures who’ve only begun to believe in the scarce beauty of ourselves, and just in time for the point to be moot.

Marya felt the flying birds of her anxiety quiet once more. Rediscovering that she could be of some help and cheer to others tempered her sense of being caught in another ruse. Perhaps the world was not floored with trapdoors. Perhaps not everyone was fake, nor everything false.

Sometimes, it was difficult to tell the difference between independence and imprisonment. The two could look an awful lot alike.

What is a poison to the simple may be a liquor to the wise.

The only medicine for gout is moderation; the only cure for excess is charity.

But understanding nothing, or very little of the world, and having no desire to understand more than you already do, well, that invites entitlement. What was a privilege becomes a right. And that, I think, is dangerous.

Those who claim to be “ready for anything” are overpacked and invariably unprepared for the one obstacle every adventurer must eventually face—disappointment.

Second, you should know that if you choose to be a tyrant, you are conscripting yourself to a life of paranoia and isolation. Your reign will be defined by treachery, rebellion, and terror of your own dwindling faculties. I have conducted a survey of history and found that the most common causes of death among dictators are beheading, dismembering, disemboweling, hanging, and poisoning. Have you never wondered why the bullies of the past are always anemic, impotent, depraved, incestuous, deformed bedwetters? It's because their obituaries were written by their victims, written by the very men and women who pulled down their pants and chopped off their heads. So shall it be for you. You will live in fear, die in violence, and your name will be scorned for generations. Ruminate upon your fate young man, that is all I have to say to you.

Man would write upon his soul if pen could reach the spot.

A reputation ruined on the front page was never restored by a retraction on the last. The guillotine gives no refunds, and neither does the press.

Outrage, like charity, is sweeter with an audience.

Ambivalence is the midwife of happiness. Do not make promises when a shrug will suffice.

Senlin felt like an ambitious weed growing in the deep shade of old trees.

We have spent our lives scrabbling up the mountainside without the promise of a mountaintop.

Byron knew that home was an ephemeral thing. Home was a feeling engorged with memory, a sense of history enlarged by fondness and family and familiar things. Home was a ritual that harmonized with the melody of a day. It was a healer of all the humiliations and failures that must be borne in public but can only be mended in private. (Byron)

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

You could resent yourself for your imperfect enjoyment of your life, but that seems to me like a never-ending chore. A thankless one, too. I think that if we really knew how good our lives were while they were good, we’d be too scared to do anything, change anything. We’d never take a risk, or explore, or grow. You can hate yourself for not fully appreciating your happy days while you had them, or you could look back and be warmed by the memory, couldn’t you?

I suppose books are like a surgeon’s scalpel. The same blade that can kill when wielded by a fool can save lives in the right hands.