Mike > Mike's Quotes

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“She rose and followed her bust from the room.”
― Margery Allingham

“The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.”
― Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady

“I believe that an author who cannot control her characters is, like a mother who cannot control her children, not really fit to look after them.”
― Margery Allingham

“There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder.”
― Margery Allingham, Death of a Ghost

“Albert Campion: 'I’m serious!'
Lugg: 'That’s unhealthy in itself.”
― Margery Allingham, Mystery Mile

“It was a little skirmish across a century.”
― Margery Allingham, Black Plumes

“He used to be a burglar, you know. It’s the old story – lost his figure. As he says himself, it cramps your style when your only means of exit are the double doors in the front hall.”
― Margery Allingham, Police at the Funeral

“When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios.”
― Margery Allingham, Dancers in Mourning

“But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren't there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they're there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don't have quite the same point of view.”
― Margery Allingham, Dancers in Mourning

“Beware of anger. It is the most difficult to remove of all the hindrances. But it is the alcohol of the body, you know, and the devil of it is that it deadens the perceptions.”
― Margery Allingham

“Mr. Campion felt that among the ordeals by fire and by water there should now be numbered the ordeal by dinner at Socrates Close.”
― Margery Allingham, Police at the Funeral

“Why it is that a garment which is honestly attractive in, say, 1910 should be honestly ridiculous a few years later and honestly charming again a few years later still is one of those things which are not satisfactorily to be explained and are therefore jolly and exciting and an addition to the perennial interest of life.”
― Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

“A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern.”
― Margery Allingham, Black Plumes

“In common with most writers, he had evolved his own technique for making bearable the drudgery of his abominable trade,”
― Margery Allingham, The Tiger In The Smoke

“Lying wastes more time than anything else in the modern world.”
― Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke

“Women are terribly shocking to men, my dear. Don't understand them. Like them. It saves such a lot of hurting one way and the other.”
― Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

“Mourning is not forgetting,’ he said gently, his helplessness vanishing and his voice becoming wise. ‘It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the knot. The end is gain, of course. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be made strong, in fact. But the process is like all other human births, painful and long and dangerous.”
― Margery Allingham, The Tiger In The Smoke

“His name is Albert Campion," she said. "He came down in Anne Edgeware's car and the first thing he did when he introduced himself was to show me a conjuring trick with a two-headed penny—he's quite inoffensive, just a silly ass.”
― Margery Allingham, The Black Dudley Murder

“As they entered, a wire-haired fox terrier of irreproachable breeding, rose from the
hearth-rug and came to meet them with leisurely dignity. Marcus effected an introduction hastily.

‘Foon,’ he said. ‘Written “Featherstonehaugh”.’

Somewhat to his host’s embarrassment Mr Campion shook hands with the dog, who seemed to appreciate the courtesy, for he followed them back to the hearth-rug, waiting for them to be seated before he took up his position on the rug again, where he sat during the rest of the proceedings with the same air of conscious breeding which characterized his master.”
― Margery Allingham, Police at the Funeral