A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock, #2)

by Sherry Thomas

God gives us only one life. But with good books, we can live a hundred, even a thousand lives in the time we are allotted on this earth.”

“I’m surprised when people are not me. I’m shocked when they are not them.”

Normally when people are shocked by someone, it’s because they didn’t know that person sufficiently well. We are asked to judge one another on such things as parentage, attire, and demeanor, as substitutes for character. So we know others primarily by how they present themselves in public, which is often the furthest thing from who they are.”

And then there are men like Inspector Treadles, an excellent person by almost all standards. But he admires the world as it is and he subscribes to the rules that uphold the world as it is. For him then it’s the principle of the thing. Anyone who breaks the rules endangers the order of the world and should be punished. He does not ask whether the rules are fair; he only cares that they are enforced.

The kind of pastry a man could come up with on short notice—and with a dead body in the house—said a great deal about him.

It was a sad comment on the state of humanity that his willingness to take her seriously counted as a very large point in his favor, when really it should be considered a bare minimum in civil discourse.

“To be thought of as the perfect woman for a man isn’t a compliment to a woman, it’s more about how a man sees himself—and what he needs.”