Book of Whispers

"There was more than one way into the Otherworld." —Lisa Tuttle, The Mysteries

Pictured above, Prof. Oddfellow knocks on a fairy door.  Pictured below, Prof. Oddfellow reveals that even a fairy window floating in space may betray subtle sounds.

"Whisper the one word, dearest."  From The Cap Becomes a Coronet by Frederick Bingham, 1894.

"The voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence," from the Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

"Anyone who has worked with groups will be aware of [the] phenomenon of a mental field and yet this may only be whispered in respectable scientific circles." —Barbara Dowds, Beyond the Frustrated Self

"I could not distinguish what he said," from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells, 1896.

From Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain.

"The golden secret is told," from The Trail of the Serpent by M. E. Braddon, 1861.

"Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world?  It is that we have only known the back of the world.  We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal.  That is not a tree, but the back of a tree.  That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud.  Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face?  If we could only get round in front." —G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

"Diagram: Interior of a tower of silence," from Letters from India and Kashmir by J. Duguid, 1874.

An illustration from A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia Blandford Edwards (1889).  The caption reads: "Each must interpret for himself."

"Standing stones, of course, are not literally people, but we gain merit by knowing about them."

One of the secrets of timelessness is to throw a shadow on the clock face. From Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1898).  The caption reads: "So as to throw the shadow on the clock face."

An illustration from Young Israel (1874).  The caption reads: "Here, take the key."

"The Riddle of the Sphinx": an illustration from The Gate Beautiful by John Ward Stimson (1903).

"The Whisper in the Night": an illustration from an 1887 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

"There is only one key ... and that is all keys in one." —Rupert Hughes, Żal: An International Romance (1905)

"Some questions are for answering; others are better left to torture and torment for all eternity." —Daryl Zero in Zero Effect