Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.

Is the Master out of his mind?' she asked me. I nodded. 'And he's taking you with him?' I nodded again. 'Where?' she asked. I pointed towards the centre of the earth. 'Into the cellar?' exclaimed the old servant. 'No,' I said, 'farther down than that.

The sole precoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity for philanthropic reasons and the perfection of weapons as instruments of civilization.

How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!

I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact, and of using in their construction methods and materials which are not entirely without the pale of contemporary engineering skill and knowledge.

Man is so constituted that health is a purely negative state. Hunger once satisfied, it is difficult for a man to imagine the horrors of starvation; they cannot be understood without being felt.

I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.