It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

Everything comes in circles. [...] The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.

On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife.

No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.