The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man - and the dogma is the drama.

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium.

There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words ‘I devise and bequeath.

Joyce has freed us from the superstition of syntax,” agreed the curly man.

Why doesn’t God smite this dictator dead?′ is a question a little remote from us,” says one of the characters in The Man Born to Be King. “Why, madam, did he not strike you dumb and imbecile before you uttered that baseless and unkind slander the day before yesterday? Or me, before I behaved with such cruel lack of consideration to that well-meaning friend? And why, sir, did he not cause your hand to rot off at the wrist before you signed your name to that dirty little bit of financial trickery?

I wanted it all to be wonderful for you.’ She waited for him to find his own answer to this, which he did with disarming swiftness. ‘That’s vanity, I suppose. Take pen and ink and write it down. His lordship is in the enjoyment of very low spirits, owing to his inexplicable inability to bend Providence to his own designs.

It has been said, by myself and others, that a love-interest is only an intrusion upon a detective story. But to the characters involved, the detective-interest might well seem an irritating intrusion upon their love-story.

But that’s men all over. They want the thing done and then, of course, they don’t like the consequences. Poor dears, they can’t help it. They haven’t got logical minds.

The sun is shining, and I am in the mood to make mistakes through over-confidence.

Harriet was angry, and her face showed it. Men; when they got together they were all alike – even Peter. For a moment he and Kirk stood together on the far side of a chasm, and she hated them both.