there comes a time when ambition ceases to burn, or romance to stir, and the highest cry of the human heart is for peace.

The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.

Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation.

People that trust themselves a dozen miles from the city, in strange houses, with servants they don't know, needn't be surprised if they wake up some morning and find their throats cut.

Love is like the measles, all the worse when it comes late.

having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable.

I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life.

Every crucial experience can be regarded either as a setback, or the start of a wonderful new adventure, it depends on your perspective!

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

Conflict is the very essence of life.

The nights did not come gently but seemed to slam down angrily upon the Earth.

After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies.

No more was seen the human form divine.

When you cannot joke about the darkness of life, that’s when the darkness takes over.

In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

Can we move this conversation along, I'm getting frightfully tired of 'hoa'.

The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.

Lifelong monogamy is a maniacal idea.

It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.

How hard is hitting? You ever walk into a pitch-black room full of furniture that you've never been in before and try to walk through it without bumping into anything? Well, it's harder than that.