Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You can find yourself insensibly twisting them round to suit your theories.
The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.
All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.
It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.
Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!
Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?
You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! – and that! – and that! – and that!
It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.
I am inclined to think -? said I. ‘I should do so,’ Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.
The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.
We have much to hope from the flowers.
The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it. I’m afraid that all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men cannot avail in this matter.
The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.
To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.
Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.
How dangerous it is to reason from insufficient data.
Violence is sometimes a duty.
The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil.
It is hardly fair to blame America for the state of San Francisco, for its population is cosmopolitan and its seaport attracts the floating vice of the Pacific; but be the cause what it may, there is much room for spiritual betterment.