Ada Palmer

Is it not miraculous, reader, the power of the mind to believe and not believe at once?

Books, even made-up stories, can't all have happy endings because they reflect the real world, and the real world isn't always happy.

Oh, miraculous chameleon, science, who can reverse your doctrine hourly and never shake our faith! What cult ever battered by this world of doubt can help but envy you?

What we choose means more than what is handed to us by chance.

Celibacy is the most extreme of sexual perversions, after all.

We all imagine happy endings to such books, pick out the page, the paragraph, in which we would step in and pluck the innocents to safety.

Now, the penis is round, and the anus is round, while the vagina’s opening is long and narrow; clearly then Nature designed the penis to fit into the anus, not into the vagina.

As Machiavelli observed, Rome showed, tyrant after tyrant, how those reared in palatine luxury, expecting to be master of the world, basely abused the godlike authority that fell to them unearned, while those promoted through merit—Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius—made judicious use of the Imperium of which they considered themselves, not owners, but custodians. It is not power that corrupts, but the belief that it is yours.