“We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.”

“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”

“In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.”

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.”

“It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”

“... when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”