When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.
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.
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' 'The dog did nothing in the night-time.' 'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.
The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.
There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?
The devilβs agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?
It is easy to be wise after the event.
A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.
It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?
It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.
There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.
It is only when you touch the higher that you realize how low we may be among the possibilities of creation.
It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.
There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.
I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland
