'Ace has won!' cried Hermann, showing his card. 'Your queen has lost,' said Chekalinsky, politely. Hermann started; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of spades! He could not believe his eyes, nor could he understand how he had made such a mistake. At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled ironically and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable resemblance... 'The old Countess!' he exclaimed, seized with terror.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of the Obukhov Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unu…

'I have come to you against my wish,' she said in a firm voice: 'but I have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win for you if played i…

'What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombassa?... I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.'

And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power ot…

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lott…