“The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.”

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

The individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

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.

The corrupt establishment knows that we are a great threat to their criminal enterprise.

Is it a crime, to fight, for what is mine?

The worst crime is faking it.

It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.

Poverty is not the root cause of crime.

If you commit a crime, you’re guilty.

Being gay is not a crime.

Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It’s a sort of crime against childhood.