Beginning on September 18, 2012 Facebook posted a quote inside what will become recurring images, as if inscribed on marble. To date (March 8, 2013) there have been sixteen such photos on Facebook. The elaborate set of four circles inscribed within one larger one is in the opinion of Greg Taylor the personal seal of Dan Brown, consisting of his initials “D” and “B” with their mirror image. The actual quotes are with some minor alterations taken from Brown’s previous novels, where they are uttered by Langdon, one of the other protagonists, the narrator, or Brown himself. This is one more example of interweaving fiction with fact. The sayings now grow beyond the confines of the fiction that gave birth to them. They have suddenly become worthy of quotation, and of course they spiral around and return one to the earlier novels. They are listed in the chronological order of their appearance with attribution added.
“As someone who had spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events. The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.” The Da Vinci Code.
“I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.” Dan Brown ???
“Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.” Angels & Demons
“Sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light.” The Lost Symbol
“Darkness feeds on apathy.” The Lost Symbol
“Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user.” The Lost Symbol
“To fly or not to fly, that’s the question.” Angels & Demons
“The power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought.” The Lost Symbol
“But who is more ignorant? The man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its awesome power?” Angels & Demons
“Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.” The Lost Symbol
“Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.” The Lost Symbol
“Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to.” Angels & Demons
“The [Potent] information was kept hidden for the same reason we keep matches from children. In the correct hands, fire can provide illumination… but in the wrong hands, fire can be highly destructive.”The Lost Symbol
“Sometimes to find truth one must move mountains.” Angels & Demons
“Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.” Deception Point
“Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true…written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don’t understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us…vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called…re-membered…-re-cognized…as that which is already inside us.”The Lost Symbol
“Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.” The DaVinci Code
Several threads run through the quotes. There is a search for knowledge and the truth, but it is actually all around us and inside of us, hidden in plain site. Brown is both student and teacher, engaged and engaging his readers in a quest. His past novels have explored and opened to millions the esoteric knowledge and societies that were summarized in one of his favorite sources, Manly P. Hall’s 1928Secret Teaching of All Ages. (http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/).