“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion.”

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

To a great mind, nothing is little.

Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!

His Ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

A dog reflects the family life.

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.

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

Women are the essential part of the theater but the writers are not writing about women. I think they’re too perplexed about the whole female situation probably.

Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.

Very few Westerners, I thought, could tolerate such a way of life- for it would mean having to forgo the luxuries which we had come to think of as necessities.

All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.

Science neither cares to please nor to displease. She is inhuman. It is not science but poetry that charms and consoles. And that is why poetry is more necessary than science.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.