'It's possible, but not interesting,' Lonnrot answered. 'You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.'

What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that re…

'Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions,' murmmured Lonnrot. 'Like Christianity,' the editor put in.

That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that i…