We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.

Subtlety chases the obvious up a never-ending spiral and never quite catches it.

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.

All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.

A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.