A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the theory of reincarnation.

I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.

We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.

I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.

It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this." I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself. "Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea." "The board-schools." "Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.