“There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.”

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 56
Context: The bus ran along a very narrow strip of cement that stood up out of the water with no guard-rail, no nothing; that's all there was to it. The bus driver leaned back and we roared along over this narrow cement strip surrounded by water and all the people in the bus, the twenty-five or forty or fifty-two people trusted him, but I never did. Sometimes it was a new driver, and I thought, how do they select these sons of bitches? There's deep water on both sides of us and with one error of judgement he'll kill us all. It was ridiculous. Suppose he had an argument with his wife that morning? Or cancer? Or visions of God? Bad teeth? Anything. He could do it. Dump us all. I knew that if I was driving that I would consider the possibility or desirability of drowning everybody. And sometimes, after just such considerations, possibility turns into reality. For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil. But none of the bus drivers ever dumped us. They were thinking instead of car payments, baseball scores, haircuts, vacations, enemas, family visits. There wasn't a real man in the whole shitload.

Treason (1988)

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 9, p. 102

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.10

"I spend my days preparing for life, not for death" http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2198557,00.html The Guardian, Laura Smith (2007-10-25)

Reg. v. Hicklin and another (1868), 11 Cox, C. C. 27; S. C. 3 L. R. Q. B. 372; reported in Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904) by James William Norton-Kyshe, p. 92.

And further, one should think: "This leads to happiness in this world and the next."
Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

Thoughts. Translation by J.G. Nichols [Hesperus Press, 2002, ISBN 9781843910121], p. 6
Aphorisms