An absence of antecedents and of relatives is sometimes an aid rather than an impediment to social advancement . . .

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.

Why should people ever take credit for charity when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion?

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.

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

I think that I had better go, Holmes." "Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.