My job is to know what other people do not know.

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.

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized.

The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public.

The early firings contained many stones.

Formality Thus the absence of all mention of particular things or properties in logic or pure mathematics is a necessary result of the fact that this study is, as we say, "purely formal".

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

Do nothing by halves which can be done by quarters.

I am a quiet man who grows through adversity.

I love things that are old and beautiful and tell a story, even if it's a sad one.

Listen to these young poets and you'll discover the voice of the present and hear the voice of the future before the future is even here.