“Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.”

“Maybe the two things go together.”

— Watson and Bob Carruthers, in “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”

A quotation from Bill Watterson

CALVIN: Why should I have to work for everything?! It’s like saying I don’t deserve it!

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1995-01-25)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/watterson-bill/4103/

“The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact — of absolute undeniable fact — from the embellishments of theorists and reporters.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “Silver Blaze”

BANQUO: What are these

So wither'd and so wild in their attire,

That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,

And yet are on't?

— Macbeth, I, iii

A burden shared is a ... something or other.

— Bor, in “Terminus”

A quotation from Addison

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-05-17), The Spectator, No. 381

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/addison-joseph/1440/

A quotation from Jane Austen

   Anne smiled and said, “My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is a company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what a call good company.”
   “You are mistaken,” said he, gently, “that is not good company; that is the best.”

Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Persuasion, ch. 16 (1818)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/austen-jane/75951/

A quotation from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I don’t particularly care about the usual. If you want to get an idea of a friend’s temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960) Lebanese-American essayist, statistician, risk analyst, aphorist
The Black Swan, Introduction (2007)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/taleb-nassim-nichola…

“I would rather melt into air,” replied Holmes, proudly taking another chair. “But I can tell you why the public don’t go to your piece without sitting the thing out myself.”

“Why?”

“Because,” replied Holmes calmly, “they prefer to stay away.”

— J.M. Barrie, “The Adventure of the Two Collaborators", quoted in Doyle's memoir _Memories and Adventures_

A quotation from Chamfort

There are more fools than wise men, and even in the wise there is more folly than wisdom.
 
[Il y a plus de fous que de sages, et dans le sage même, il y a plus de folie que de sagesse.]

Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 2, ¶ 149 (1795) [tr. Merwin (1969)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/chamfort-nicolas/759…

PROSPERO: Look thou be true; do not give dalliance

Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw

To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious,

Or else, good night your vow!

— The Tempest, IV, i

Death is the price we pay for progress, you know.

— The Doctor, in “The Brain of Morbius”

Ace, I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. He's all yours from now on... I'm going home to Doris.

— The Brigadier, in “Battlefield”

CONSTABLE: Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.

ORLEANS: He never did harm, that I heard of.

CONSTABLE: Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still.

— Henry V, III, viii

“Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “The Sign of the Four”

“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “The Sign of the Four”

BRUTUS: O, that a man might know

The end of this day's business ere it come!

But it sufficeth that the day will end,

And then the end is known.

— Julius Caesar, V, i

“A plank?”

“The theory is very simple. You walk along it, at the end you fall off. Drop one thousand feet. Dead.”

— The Doctor and the Captain, in “The Pirate Planet”

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

— From “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”

KING HENRY V: Let us swear

That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not,

For there is none of you so mean and base,

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

— Henry V, III, i