“Tedium is the lack of a mithology. To whom has no beliefs, even doubt is impossible, even skepticism has no strength to suspect.”

Nell Latimer in Ch. 6 : nell latimer’s book, p. 51
The Visitor (2002)

Book I, fable 10, line 1.
Fables

The Last Good Campaign, 2008-10-12, Thurston Clarke, 2008, June, Vanity Fair Online http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806?currentPage=4,
Said when asked if he thought Robert F. Kennedy could win the Democratic nomination for President in 1968, comparing Kennedy to Judas Iscariot.

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Part 5, XXXVII
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 14
Context: What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? 'Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'
I reject that entirely. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.

Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: There is, and always has been, a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries like the United States, where all men are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentiation into classes has been of individuals rather than of families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn. It is but natural for those who can trace their own better circumstances to the superior industry and frugality that gave them a start, and the superior intelligence that enabled them to take advantage of every opportunity, to imagine that those who remain poor do so simply from lack of these qualities.
But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced out, will see the mistake in this notion. The fallacy is similar to that which would be involved in the assertion that every one of a number of competitors might win a race. That any one might is true; that every one might is impossible.
For, as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or product of labor, but upon what is left to labor after rent is taken out; and when land is all monopolized, as it is everywhere except in the newest communities, rent must drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid class will he just able to live and reproduce, and thus wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called the standard of comfort — that is, the amount of necessaries and comforts which habit leads the working classes to demand as the lowest on which they will consent to maintain their numbers. This being the case, industry, skill, frugality, and intelligence can avail the individual only in so far as they are superior to the general level just as in a race speed can avail the runner only in so far as it exceeds that of his competitors. If one man work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than ordinary, he will get ahead; but if the average of industry, skill, or intelligence be brought up to the higher point, the increased intensity of application will secure but the old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead must work harder still.

The Art of Peace (1992)

Athene, mother of Syrinx, resident of Eden habitat
The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Neutronium Alchemist (1997)