Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.

To make a precise scientific description of reality out of words is like trying to build a rigid structure out of pure quicksilver.

He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin.

Every great man has a woman behind him ... And every great woman has some man or other in front of her, tripping her up.

all conscious thought is a process in time; so that to think consciously about Time is like trying to use a foot-rule to measure its own length.

It seems to me quite disastrous that the idea should have got about that Christianity is an other-worldly, unreal, idealistic kind of religion that suggests that if we are good we shall be happy. On the contrary, it is fiercely and even harshly realistic, insisting that there are certain eternal achievements that make even happiness look like trash.

It is the first duty of a gentleman to remember in the morning who he went to bed with the night before.