I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real… — L. Sprague deCamp

But what argument could I offer? It was nothing but an irrational feeling—the kind of “premonition” we get from time to time but remember only on the rare occasions when it is fulfilled by the event. I had no evidence.

I passed that off as women’s intuition, which is wrong more often than not. People remember the times it works and forget those it fails.

His voice had a hypnotic quality, which lulled one into a kind of passive daze. One ended with the impression that one had had a wonderful revelation but without remembering much of what the Master had actually said. Some of his assertions seem to contradict what others had told me of his doctrines; but I understood that he brought out a new doctrine every month or two, keeping his suckers too confused to think.