The field maneuvers may be different from those in Holmes's day, and the villain is more socially mobile, but since Sir Arthur we ...have not changed the three essential ingredients of the private eye. He must be a bachelor, with the bachelor's harum-scarum availability at all hours (William Powell's marriage to Myrna "Nora" Loy, a wistful concession to the family trade, fooled nobody). He must have an inconspicuous fund of curious knowledge, which in the end is always crucially relevant. He must pity the official guardians of the law. Of course, the twentieth century has grafted some interesting personality changes on the original. Holmes was an eccentric in the Victorian sense, a man with queer hobbies--cocaine was lamentable but pardonably melodramatic--whose social code was essentially that of the ruling classes. He was, in a way, the avenging squire of the underworld ready to administer a horsewhipping to the outcasts who were never privileged by birth to receive it from their fathers. Bogart is a displaced person whose present respectability is uncertain, a classless but well-contained vagabond who is not going to be questioned about where he came from or where he is going. ("I came to Casablanca for the waters." "But there are no waters in Casablanca." "I was misinformed.")LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My desire is that your office [the New York Customhouse] shall be conducted on strictly business principles.... In making appointm...ents and removals of subordinates, you should be perfectly independent of mere influence. Neither my recommendation, nor that of the Secretary of the Treasury, nor the recommendation of any Member of Congress, or other influential person, should be specially regarded. Let appointments and removals be made ... by fixed rules.... Let no man be put out merely because he is a friend of the late collector [Chester A. Arthur], and no man be put in merely because he is our friend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good s...ense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indiana was really, I suppose, a Democratic State. It has always been put down in the book as a state that might be carried by a c...lose and careful and perfect organization and a great deal of--[from audience: "soap"Ma reference to purchased votes, the word being followed by laughter]. I see reporters here, and therefore I will simply say that everybody showed a great deal of interest in the occasion, and distributed tracts and political documents all through the country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What a pleasant lot of fellows they are. What a pity they have so little sense about politics. If they lived North the last one of... them would be Republicans.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use th...eir best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mississippi: I told you I was no good with a gun. Bull: The trouble is Doc, Cole was in front of the gun. The safe place is b...ehind Mississippi when he shoots that thing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river?... Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »