There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.[repeated often in the rest of the book]
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
They say all the world loves a lover – apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth.
O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in’t.
I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose their head and do the most absurd things.
Even the most sober of us is liable to have his head turned by success.
What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn’t be so busy looking for it in other people’s.
The body – the cage – is everything of the most respectable – but through the bars, the wild animal looks out.
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
In the midst of tragedy we start the comedy.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
