Brian Skinner

“Ramses. I had long since resigned myself to the impossibility of teaching Emerson the proper subjects of conversation before the servants. Wilkins is not resigned; but there is nothing he can do about it. Not only does Emerson rant on and on about personal matters at the dinner table, but he often consults Wilkins and John. Wilkins has a single reply to all questions: “I really could not say, sir.” John, who had never been in service before he came to us, had adapted very comfortably to Emerson’s habits.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case

“The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideologues, dogmatists, and bullies—people who think that their rightness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma, or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later, by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them.”
― Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

“First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness.”
― Robert P. Lanza, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

“For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.”
― Robert E. Howard, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane