It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.

The less experienced a doctor is, the higher are his notions of professional dignity . . .

The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

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.

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

...it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night.

There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.