There are various ways of getting at secrets. The most approved methods, as recommended both theoretically and practically in philosophical novels, are eavesdropping at key-holes, picking the locks of chests and desks, peeping into letters, steaming wafers, and insinuating hot wire under sealing wax; none of which methods I hold it lawful to practise.

Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]

Hermetic quote Peacock Nightmare Abbey various ways getting secrets most approved methods recommended theoretically practically eavesdropping picking locks peeping into letters none lawful

Consider also:

  1. “Maybe I’m not really interested in peoples’ secrets. Maybe it’s the sense of violation I’m after. That’s probably even worse.”
  2. “all who seek to discover through personal vision the secrets in human nature must follow the golden rule of true spiritual science. This golden rule is as follows: For every one step that you take in the pursuit of higher knowledge, take three steps in the perfection of your own character.”
  3. “Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.”
  4. “Burroughs writes in the introduction to Man at Leisure that ‘perhaps writers are actually readers from hidden books. These books are carefully concealed and surrounded by deadly snares. It is a dangerous expedition to find one of these books and bring back a few words'”
  5. “By them, too, he will perceive how Wisdom, Strength and Beauty have been employed by the Creator, like three grand supporting pillars, in the structure of his own organism.”