We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.