“Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.”

Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear for the most part to dislike me.

Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life – we are never bored.

I am black or white, I’ll never be grey in my life.

To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.

The present state of atomic theory is characterized by the fact that we not only believe the existence of atoms to be proved beyond a doubt, but also we even believe that we have an intimate knowledge of the constituents of the individual atoms.

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.

The only thing on the mind of a shark is to eat.

Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.

It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.