It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

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

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.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

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

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

Reading brings us unknown friends.” — Honoré de Balzac

Statistics indicate that the church is rapidly losing in the population explosion. There are fewer Christians per capita every day.

I say what I think and I think what I say.

I don't want to call anyone an outright winner without having seen everything.

Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.

There is something magical in seeing what you can do, what texture and tone and colour you can produce merely with a pen point and a bottle of ink.

But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kind of heaven.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

I never learned to ride a bicycle, and it is too late now. I never learned to drive. I never learned to swim.

The universe is made of one kind of what-ever-it-is, which cannot be defined.