You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.

Brothers are a blessing for one thing. There is no possibility of any young lady getting unreasonably conceited if she be endowed with them.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.

When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities.

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

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.