The Wailing Asteroid

“It isn’t reasonable!” insisted Holmes. “It doesn’t make sense!”

“The question,” observed Burke, “isn’t whether it makes sense, but whether it’s fact.”

They raise the question of whether I’ve been crazy, and am suddenly sane, or whether I’ve been sane up to now, and have suddenly gone crazy.

For once, no eminent figure assumed the undignified pose involved in standing on one’s dignity.

Eminent men were called on to take command and arrange suitable measures. They immediately acted as eminent men so often do; they took action to retain their eminence. Their first instinct was caution. When a man is important enough, it does not matter if he never does anything. It is only required of him that he do nothing wrong. Eminent figures all over the world prepared to do nothing wrong. They were not so concerned to do anything right.