The Spirit Engineer

A mystery is only a fact in disguise

We fear the dead, when really, we ought to be far more afraid of the living.

Death is a beginning.

If ghosts are real, death is not.

How does it feel, to see a dying child? One does not feel at all for there is nothing in the mind to make sense of it. Nothing, but one's own death.

O Lord, to know that one is not allowed to be afraid; it is the most frightening thing of all.

The séance had made its impression, not so much on my senses, but on the very imagination of my soul.

No creature on earth moves so quickly as an irritating man.

One’s consciousness passes into a new realm on the brink of death, whether the soul does so or not. Anger, jealousy, hatred, ambition, regret, none of them matter in the end.

Certain men are liable to be duped, and there is no creature so gullible as the certain man.

I had made my own calculations as the years had passed since boyhood, understanding the grim expectations of my sex. It was equally a relief and a surprise to have found myself spared by the giant tread of fate’s jackboot as it had marched towering above me, the monstrous, insensible colossus, leaving those born in my inglorious decade cowering in its path, relieved though somewhat ashamed on a bubble of untrammelled dirt. While all around us men slightly older, and mere months younger, were squashed face first, bones snapped, into the puddled trenches of its staggering tracks. Then, what an extraordinary gift from God, to see little Robert and those of his age spared too, supposing this war ended quickly and the next came late enough.

For someone so unwell, he seemed preposterously healthy.

Women need space to grieve, not husbands.

Only poor men are brave; rich men have no need to be.

How those poor souls people crammed themselves into the lifeboats, all classes mixed together I shall never know. I experienced something similar in the Opera House last Tuesday evening, though at least we were dry. Poor Mr Ismay; I hear he weeps at the mere sight of an ice cube

Ghosts are mere memories of lives passed, granted a reassuring afterlife, manifested by the pleading, grasping, fearful imagination of our own mortality.

It is a brave thing to die.

What then, had I discovered? That there is nobody so duplicitous as oneself? That certainty is nothing but unreasonable belief? That there can be no answer to death? That there should be no answer to it, at least not for the living? That we have in all of us, written into our very matter, an unpassable divide; and if there is a bridge between this world and the next, then surely there is only one toll to pay.

A man cannot hide from his secrets; he may as well hide from his skin.