We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we 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.

Everyday, you leave a footprint!

You look at [terrorists] faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from ? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda.

It was too nerve-wracking, a shocking spectacle, like seeing an old, calm friend go insane.

Nothing is lost and nothing is created in the operations of art as those of nature.

People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?

You either have an imaginative mind or you don't. All of my writing is God-given. I don't write my stories - they write themselves.

My experience in life tells me that the values that are now being labeled 'conservative' are the only way that blacks can get ahead.

You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.