Source: 'Salem's Lot
“It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin.”
Les villes se relèvent aussi difficilement que les maisons de commerce de leur ruine.
Source: Pierrette (1840), Ch. III: Pathology of Retired Mercers.
“There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.”
Crofts, Act III
Variant: There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves.
Source: 1890s, Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)
“We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.”
Statement about the conditions in Czechoslovakia and other previously Soviet Bloc countries. Daily Telegraph London (3 January 1991)
“Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.”
Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VII, p. 72.
“Too many kings can ruin an army”
Directive (1947)
Context: Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it…
