Picaresque Novels

"“When you smoke your pipe, you feel an initial rush of stimulation, followed by a calmness, a steadying of the nerves. This is but a trace, a shadow, of nicotine poisoning. If you were cut with this dagger, that relaxation of the nerves would advance to the point where you would simply forget to breathe, and drown in air … every time you smoke tobacco, you are prefiguring your own death.” “Horrid … it makes me want to smoke something just to calm down.” “Mr. Hooke experimented with an herb called bhang that would cure what ails you — alas, it is harder to get.”"

"During lulls they engaged in Solomon Kohan’s idea of small talk: ”This is an interesting place.” “I am pleased you find it interesting.” “It puts me in mind of an operation I used to have in Jerusalem a long time ago.” “Now that you mention it, the full name of the Templars was the Knights of the Temple of Solomon. So if you are that Solomon—” “Do not play word games with me. I refer, not to this hole in the ground, which is but an indifferent crypt for long-forgotten knights, but to what lies over.” “The Court of Technologickal Arts?” “If that is what you call it.” “What would you call it?” “A temple.”"

"“Sergeant Shaftoe,” said the old man, “I do pity the Grim Reaper on the day that he shall finally come for you in earnest. I fear you’ll use him so roughly that he shall have to go on holiday for a fortnight.”"

"“Sir, my admiration for your work is mingled with wonder that a man of your age and dignity is out doing things like this.” Daniel turned to look him in the eye; and his creased face was grave and calm in the morning light. He looked nothing like the daft codger who had come to dinner yesterday evening and embarrassed the other English by dribbling wine down his shirt-front. “Listen to me. I did not wish to be summoned by your Princess. Summoned, I did not wish to come. But having been summoned, and having come, I mean to give a good account of myself. That’s how I was taught by my father, and the men of his age who slew Kings and swept away not merely Governments but whole Systems of Thought, like Khans of the Mind. I would have my son in Boston know of my doings, and be proud of them, and carry my ways forward to another generation on another continent. Any opponent who does not know this about me, stands at a grave disadvantage; a disadvantage I am not above profiting from.”"

"There is nothing quite so civilized as to be recognized in public places as the author of books no one has read."

""Why does the tide rush out to the sea?" "The influence of the sun and the moon." "Yet you and I cannot see the sun or the moon. The water does not have senses to see, or a will to follow them. How then do the sun and moon, so far away, affect the water?" "Gravity", responded Colonel Barnes, lowering his voice like a priest intoning the name of God, and glancing about to see whether Sir Isaac Newton were in earshot. "That's what everyone says now. 'Twas not so when I was a lad. We used to parrot Aristotle and say it was in the nature of water to be drawn up by the moon. Now, thanks to our fellow-passenger, we say 'gravity'. It seems a great improvement. But is it really? Do you understand the tides, Colonel Barnes, simply because you know to say 'gravity'?"."

"Condemn an Englishman to hell, and he'd plant a bed of petunias and roll out a nice bowling-green on the brimstone."

"If Solomon knew all of this, why didn't he just come out and say, 'The sun is in the middle of the solar system and planets go round about it in ellipses?'" "I believe he did say so, in the design of his temple." "Yes, but why are God and Solomon alike so damned oblique in everything? Why not just come out and say it?" “… If you were to use me thus in a letter, I would conclude you were in the employ of the Beast, as some say you are." "What, merely for suggesting that the world does something other than rot?"

"It's right there in the Bible, Daniel. First chapter: the Garden of Eden. Last chapter: the Apocalypse." "I know, I know, the world started out perfectly good and has gotten worse and worse since then, and the only question is how bad will it get before God brings down the curtain. I was raised to believe that this tendency was as fixed and unavoidable as gravity, Isaac. But the Apocalypse did not come in 1666." "It will occur not long after 1867," Isaac said. "That is the year when the Beast will fall." "Most Anglican cranks are guessing 1700 for the demise of the Catholic Church." "It is not the only way that the Anglicans are wrong."

""I am only trying to recover what Solomon knew," Isaac said. "I can't help but wonder if you — perhaps even I — don't know a hell of a lot more about practically every subject than Solomon ever did," Daniel said. Isaac said nothing for a moment, but something about his silhouette looked wounded, or sad."

"“As soon as it is heated a bright cherry red, the lattice-work dissolves, like sugar in coffee, and the metal becomes brittle and worthless — as the Franks discovered during the Crusades, when we captured fragments of such weapons around Damascus and brought them back to Christendom and tried to find out their secrets in our own forges. Nothing whatsoever was learned, except the depth of our own ignorance — but ever since, we have called this stuff Damascus steel.”"

""It is an error for you to feign modesty when you are talking to me," the King said, firmly but not angrily. I saw my error. We use humility when we fear that someone will consider us a rival or a threat; and while this may be true of common or even noble men, it can never be true of le Roi and so to use humility in His Majesty's presence is to imply that the King shares the petty jealousies and insecurities of others. "Forgive me for being foolish, Sire." "Never; but I forgive you for being inexperienced.”"

"Godspeed? Godspeed! What kind of a thing is that to say to a fucking galley-slave?"

"But he mastered his rage, and answered in a tight voice: "Understand: Louis is not like us—he does not trifle with reasons. He is a reason. Which is why he must be destroyed.” "And it's your ambition to do the destroying?" "Humor me, girl, by using the word 'destiny' instead of 'ambition.'""

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo."

"What's troubling you, then? I daresay you are the brooding-est fellow I have ever seen." "These chairs." "Did I hear you correctly, sir?" "Look at them," Gomer Bolstrood said, in a voice hollow with despair. "Those who built this estate had no shortage of money, of that you can be sure—but the furniture! It is either stupid and primitive, like this ogre's throne I'm seated on.... I could make better chairs in an afternoon, drunk, given a shrub and a jackknife."

"Jack was finally going mad, and it was a small comfort to know that he'd picked the right city for it."

"Revolution is like the wheeling of stars round the pole. It is driven by unseen powers, it is inexorable, it moves all things at once, and men of discrimination may understand it, predict it, benefit from it."

"It being one of the many peculiar features of Jack's upbringing that…at the age when every boy engages in mock sword-fight, he and Bob happened to suddenly find themselves living in a military barracks, where their duels served as free entertainment for large numbers of men who actually did know a few things about fighting with swords, and who found the entertainment lacking if it was not well played…The result being that from a young age the Shaftoe boys had sword-fighting abilities considerably above their station in life (most people like them never came into contact with a sword at all, unless it was with the edge of the blade in the last instant of their life)."

"On the principle that you never know when you'll find food again, he gestured for more, and they somewhat reluctantly handed him a second ladle, and uneasily watched him drink it…it had chunks of mushrooms or something on the bottom that might give some nourishment…People, frequently naked, danced around bonfires. A certain amount of fucking went on, as one would expect, but at least some of it seemed to be ceremonial fucking. Certain small animals might have died unnatural deaths. There was chanting and singing in a language that wasn't exactly German. Of course, presiding over the entire thing was Satan the Prince of Darkness, or so Jack assumed — as what else would you call a jet-black figure, horned and bearded, maybe a hundred feet high, dancing in the boiling, smoky, cloudy sky just above the summit?"

"Why today? Because I do not believe God put me on this earth, and gave me either the best or second-best mind currently in existence, so that I could dig a large hole in the ground," the Doctor said. "I don't want my epitaph to be, 'He brought the price of silver down one-tenth of one percent.'"

"Formerly a prosperous industry, upon which the fortunes of great families such as the Fuggers and Hacklhebers were founded, silver mining was laid low by the Thirty Years' War and the discovery, by the Spaniards, of very rich deposits at Potosi in Peru and Guanajuato in Mexico."

"He's rich," Jack muttered to Eliza, "or connected with rich persons." "Yes—the clothes, the coins ..." "All fakeable." "How do you know him to be rich, then?" "In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games."

"It turned out that if you did the mathematicks on a typical war, the cost of powder was more important than just about anything else — Herr Geidel insisted that the gunpowder in the arsenal of Venice, for example, was worth more than the annual revenue of the entire city. This explained a lot of oddness Jack had witnessed in various campaigns and forced him to reconsider (briefly) his opinion that all officers were mad."

"”Is longevity much on your mind, Mr. Waterhouse?" "It is on the mind of every man. And I am a man. Who or what are you?" Enoch had got a look as if he were trying to be patient—which was not the same as being patient. "There's a certain unexamined arrogance to your question, Daniel. … you presume it is all perfectly natural and pre-ordained that the earth should be populated by men, whose superstitions ought to be the ruler by which all things are judged; but why might I not ask of you, 'Daniel Waterhouse, who or what are you? And why does Creation teem with others like you, and what is your purpose?' … Nor am I of a humour to be rated a hobgoblin or any other figment of the humane imagination; for 'twas God who imagined me, just as He did you, and thereby brought us into being.""

"One of those moments had arrived: Jack had been presented with the opportunity to be stupid in some way that was much more interesting than being shrewd would've been. These moments seemed to come to Jack every few days. They almost never came to Bob…. Jack had been expecting such a moment to arrive today. He'd supposed, until moments ago, that it had already come: namely, when he decided to mount the horse and ride after the ostrich. But here was a rare opportunity for stupidity even more flagrant and glorious. … Bob was convinced that the Imp of the Perverse rode invisibly on Jack's shoulder whispering bad ideas into his ear, and that the only counterbalance was Bob himself… But Bob was in England."

"Waterhouse: "Now, if you--the ingenious Dr. Leibniz--contrive a machine that gives the impression of thinking--is that really thinking, or merely reflecting your genius?" Leibniz: "You could as well have asked: are we thinking? Or merely reflecting God's genius?" Waterhouse: "If we are mere mechanisms, obeying rules laid down by God, then all of our actions are predestined, and we are not really thinking." Leibniz: "This is one of the two great labryrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it--which must have been a great spiritual struggle--and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that philosophy now seems to be leading you back towards predestination.""

""The responsibility now falls upon you to make it all happen." "My Lord? To make what happen?" But Wilkins was either dead or asleep."

"I believe that binary arithemetickal engines will be of enormous significance"

"When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe—for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient."

"Not that he was doing a good job of being sneaky. Isaac [Newton] was accustomed to being so much brighter than everyone else that he really had no idea of what others were or weren't capable of. So when he got it into his head to be tricky, he came up with tricks that would not deceive a dog."

"Like a few pebbles rattling down into a stoneware bowl, they descended into a rocky crater, maculated with schlock-heaps and filled with a perpetual miasma of woodsmoke. “Even if your taste is abominable, I must grant you credit for consistency,” Jack muttered. “How is it you always end up in the same sort of place?”"

"Set above the door was a coat of arms carved into the stone: on a blank shield, a pair of human thigh-bones crossed. A Jolly Roger, minus skull. Daniel sat on his horse and contemplated its sheer awfulness for a while and savored the dull, throbbing embarrassment of being English."

"Is it a good yarn?" "It is not a narrative. It is a mathematical technique so advanced that only two people in the world understand it," the Doctor said. "When published, it will bring about enormous changes in not only mathematics, but all forms of natural philosophy and engineering. People will use it to build machines that fly through the air like birds, and that travel to other planets, and its very power and brilliance will sweep old, tottering, worn-out systems of thought into the dustbin.” "And you invented it, Doctor?" Eliza asked, as Jack was occupied making finger-twirling movements in the vicinity of his ear. "Yes—seven or eight years ago." "And still no one knows about it, besides—" "Me, and the other fellow." "Why haven't you told the world about it?" "Because it seems the other fellow invented it ten years before I did, and didn't tell anyone."

"I tell you again. True beauty is to be found in natural forms. The more we magnify, and the closer we examine, the works of Artifice, the grosser and stupider they seem. But if we magnify the natural world it only becomes more intricate and excellent."

""Shall we then say, like Newton, that all such truths are made arbitrarily by God? Shall we seek truths in the occult? For if God has laid these rules down arbitrarily, then they are occult by nature. To me, this notion is offensive; it seems to cast God in the role of a capricious despot who desires to hide the truth from us. In some things, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, God may not have had any choice when He created the world. In others, such as the inverse square law of gravity, He may have had choices; but in such cases, I like to believe he would have chose wisely and according to some coherent plan that our minds--insofar that they are in God's image--are capable of understanding."

"They tell a story--albeit in a fragmentary and patchwork way--of a sea-change that is spreading across Christendom, in large part because of men like Leibniz, Newton, and Descartes. It is a change in the way men think, and it is the doom of the Inquisition."

"Elsewhere, the same amount of labor might've made a keg of butter or a week's worth of firewood; here it was spent on raising a block several inches, so that it could be carted into the city and raised by other workers, higher and higher, so that Parisians could have rooms higher than they were wide, and windows taller than the trees they looked out at. Paris was a city of stone, the color of bone, beautiful and hard — you could dash yourself against it and never leave a mark. It was built, so far as Jack could tell, on the principle that there was nothing you couldn't accomplish if you crowded a few tens of millions of peasants together on the best land in the world and then never stopped raping their brains out for a thousand years."

"It is a symbol of Mercury--patron of commerce--who has been worshipped in this cellar--and in this city--for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adapts itself to any container."

"It is not skepticism for its own sake, Father. Simply an awareness that we are prone to error, and that it is difficult to view anything impartially." "That is fine when you are talking about comets." "I'll not discuss religion, then. Good-bye, Father." "God be with you, Daniel."

"I knew we'd reach this point in the conversation, Jack — the point where you accused me of being a traitor to my country and my religion — and so I'm ready for it, and I'm actually not going to cut your head off…I suppose I could reveal to you my innermost thoughts about what it's like to be a Protestant patriot in thrall to a Catholic King who loves France, but life is short, and I intend to spend as little of it as possible standing in dark stables apologizing to shit-covered Vagabonds.… Try to concentrate. You're a galley slave chained to a post in a stable in Paris. Be troubled by that."

"Jack whipped the chain out of the fire and got it round his neck. It was stranglin' time in gay Paree."

"If we have a duty to be alert for the signs of the End Times, then let me go, Father. For if the signs are comets, then the first to know will be the astronomers. If the signs are plague, the first to know—" "—will be physicians. Yes, I understand. But are you suggesting that those who study natural philosophy can acquire some kind of occult knowledge—special insight into God's Creation, not available to the common Bible-reading man?" "Er ... I suppose that's quite clearly what I'm suggesting." Drake nodded. "That is what I thought. Well, God gave us brains for a reason—not to use those brains would be a sin."

"But they had, perversely, been living among people who were peering into the wrong end of the telescope, or something, and who had convinced themselves that the opposite was true--that the world had once been a splendid, orderly place--that men had made a reasonably trouble-free move from the Garden of Eden to the Athens of Plato and Aristotle, stopping over in the Holy Land to encrypt the secrets of the Universe in the pages of the Bible, and that everything had been slowly, relentlessly falling apart ever since."

"... but he knows that this ungainly moment will be edited from The Story that will one day live in the memories of the American Waterhouses. The Story is in excellent hands. Mrs. Goose has come along to watch and memorize, and she has a creepy knack for that kind of thing...."

"He is still alive, I see," Roger mused. "If Hooke spent any more time lingering at Death's door, Satan himself would have the man ejected for vagrancy. Yet just as I am wondering whether I can make time for his funeral, I learn from Sources that he is campaigning like a French regiment through every whorehouse in Whitechapel."

"Daniel Waterhouse does not own slaves.... So little Godfrey sits on the lap, not of some Angolan negress, but of their neighbor: the daft but harmless Mrs. Goose, who comes into their home occasionally to do the one thing that she apparently can do: to entertain children by spouting all manner of nonsensical stories and doggerel that she has collected or invented.... Many words are said, but they make no more impact on Daniel than Mrs. Goose's incoherent narratives about cutlery leaping over cœlestial bodies and sluttish hags living in discarded footwear."

"My father, Drake, educated me for one reason alone," Daniel finally says. "To assist him in his preparations for the Apocalypse. He reckoned it would occur in the year 1666—Number of the Beast and all that... When I came of age, I would be a man of the cloth, with the full university education, well versed in many dead classical languages, so that I could stand on the Cliffs of Dover and personally welcome Jesus Christ back to England in fluent Aramaic."

"Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was."

"“Did you bring the thing I asked for?” “We will speak of that later,” Enoch said judiciously. “But I did bring two things you should have asked for, and forgot to.” “Hmm, let me think…I love riddles…a replacement penis, and a keg of decent beer?”"