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

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

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.

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously . . .

The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.