Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Emile Gaboriau

French Novelist, Writer and Journalist

"Always suspect that which seems probably, and begin by believing what appears incredible."

"A father is the one friend upon whom we can always rely. In the hour of need, when all else fails, we remember him upon whose knees we sat when children, and who soothed our sorrows; and even though he may be unable to assist us, his mere presence serves to comfort and strengthen us."

"A statement from you is more convincing than all the proofs in the world."

"Alas! we must suffer ourselves before we can feel for others."

"As to acknowledging that he was about to obtain a triumph with the ideas of another man, he never thought of such a thing. It is generally in perfect good faith that the jackdaw struts about in the peacock's feathers."

"Chance is sometimes a wonderful accomplice in crime."

"Excessive suffering brings with it a kind of dull insensibility and stupor...."

"There are some people who must be saved without warning, and against their will."

"Vengeance is a delicious fruit, which must be allowed to ripen in order that it may be fully enjoyed."

"He was as yet not sufficiently experienced in ruffianism to know that one villain always sacrifices another to advance his own project; he was credulous enough to believe in the old adage of 'honor amongst thieves."

"I have watched him as only a woman can watch a man upon whom her fate depends, but it has always been in vain."

"It is at the family fireside, often under the shelter of the law itself, that the real tragedies of life are acted; in these days traitors wear gloves, scoundrels cloak themselves in public esteem, and their victims die broken-hearted, but smiling to the last. What I have just related to you is almost an every-day occurrence; and yet you profess astonishment."

"Like those imperceptible insects which, having once penetrated the root of a tree devour it in a single night, suspicion, when it invades our minds, soon develops itself and destroys our firmest beliefs."

"Woman submits to her fate; man makes his."

"You say she loves him? No one but a coward would be defrauded of the woman he loved and who loved him. Ah, if I had once felt Madeleine's hand tremble in mine, if her rosy lips had pressed a kiss upon my brow, the whole world could not take her from me."