In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

I once saw a photograph of a large herd of wild elephants in Central Africa Seeing an airplane for the first time, and all in a state of wild collective terror... As, however, there were no journalists among them, the terror died down when the airplane was out of sight.

The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual intercourse.

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Modern life cannot be constructed on . . . physically strenuous principles. A great deal of work is sedentary, and most manual work exercises only a few specialized muscles.