There’s no wonderment left in the real world any longer. Or rather, everything is so wonderful the wonder’s gone out of it.

My very revered father, I am beginning to think that – Well, there’s little peace in this world for a quiet book-loving man.

Now, now,” said Ellery with a smile. “Surely that’s overheated imagination, Jenny? I thought ghosts are indigenous only to old English castles.

For remember always the maxim: He who would know right must first know wrong!

Had Walter ever read Bernard Shaw (he had not), he might have been pleased with the line, "When you have learned something, my dear, it often feels at first as if you had lost something.

The place smelled male, not the metal-and-soap maleness of a locker room nor the malt-and-sawdust maleness of an old-time corner saloon, but the leather-and-oiled-wood maleness of a city club, as finished and self-consistent as the ash of a fine cigar. At sight of the skirted figure stalking him, the sole visible attendant took refuge behind a showcase; surely a giraffe, were it a male one, would have startled him less.

Why did people do it? Why this herd curiosity about a street, a house, windows, doors? He was a public servant, the Inspector mused, but there were times when he would enjoy loading all the rubbernecks onto barges and towing them out to sea to be served, with ceremony, to sharks.

The girl was kind in a special way; when you spoke to her, she seemed to stop thinking of whatever she been thinking and listened to you altogether.

If it pains you to discover that a Nice Man can be a crumbum, Tom, it's life you've got to object to, not Percy in particular.

Now, Jehovah, Yahweh, was a member of no Trinity, was represented by no lambs, suffered no little children. He was an almighty vindictive deity. He meddled in individual lives. And He was always right because He was.