 The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless. |
| There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman. |
| Where there is no imagination there is no horror. |
| Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. |
| For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination. |
| A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. |
| Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst. |
| The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. |
| Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature. |
| As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. |
| Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. |
| To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. |
| It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. |
| My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. |
| You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable. |
| The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. |
| How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? |
| I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. |
| Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. |
| From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. |
