[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening - all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.

At its most elemental, a spell is no more than a recipe for change.

I'm afraid your literary prizes don't give you any jurisdiction in this particular instance, sir.

You cannot instill joy. You can only find where it lives and bring it forth.

My style is definitely not ladylike - frills and bows kinda scare me - but I like the military look because I love that olive green khaki color.

That's one of the most important things to me is that Detroit and Ann Arbor got my back. If you don't have hometown love, then what's the point?

Do we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so as to be an active part of our communities, or do we close in on ourselves, saying 'I have so many things to do, that's not my job'?

We prepare to die by pushing ourselves to love less narrowly. In that sense, readying ourselves for death is really an ever-widening entry into life.

To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself.

I wanted to be a part of the downtown renaissance.