I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.

You have been in Afghanistan I perceive.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood.

Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.

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

You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.” “A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.” “You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.