The Amateur Cracksman quotes

“Exactly,” said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent to some hidden train of thought; “exactly what I remember of you, and I’ll bet it’s as true now as it was ten years ago.

We don’t alter, Bunny. We only develop.

I suppose neither you nor I are really altered since you used to let down that rope and I used to come up it hand over hand. You would stick at nothing for a pal—what?”

But here we are at the Albany, and I hope there’s some fire left; for I don’t know how you feel, Bunny, but for my part I’m as cold as Keats’s owl.”

He could think of Keats on his way from a felony!

He could hanker for his fireside like another! Floodgates were loosed within me, and the plain English of our adventure rushed over me as cold as ice. Raffles was a burglar. I had helped him to commit one burglary, therefore I was a burglar, too.

Does the painter paint for bread alone? Must you and I be driven to crime like Tom of Bow and Dick of Whitechapel? You pain me, my dear chap; you needn’t laugh, because you do.

Art for art’s sake is a vile catchword, but I confess it appeals to me.

In this case my motives are absolutely pure, for I doubt if we shall ever be able to dispose of such peculiar stones. But if I don’t have a try for them—after tonight—I shall never be able to hold up my head again.”

and meanwhile Reuben Rosenthall is high enough game for you and me. We know he’s armed. We know how Billy Purvis can fight. It’ll be no soft thing, I grant you. But what of that, my good Bunny—what of that?

A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, dear boy, or what the dickens is a heaven for?

”

“Because two eyes are as good as four and take up less room.

Never hunt in couples unless you’re obliged.

But don’t you look offended, Bunny; there’ll be plenty for you to do when the time comes, that I promise you. You shall have your share of the fun, never fear, and a purple diamond all to yourself—if we’re lucky.”

“Cricket,” said Raffles, “like everything else, is good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of excitement it isn’t in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore.

What’s the satisfaction of taking a man’s wicket when you want his spoons?

Still, if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won’t get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot’s just the kind of mental exercise one wants. Yes, perhaps there’s some affinity between the two things after all.

“My dear Bunny, that’s exactly where you make a mistake.

To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you simply must have a parallel, ostensible career⁠—the more public the better.

The principle is obvious. Mr.

“Not necessarily, my dear Bunny, though I admit that the chances are against us. Yet I’m not so sure of that either. There are all sorts of possibilities in these three-cornered combinations.

Set A to watch B, and he won’t have an eye left for C.

That’s the obvious theory, but then Mackenzie’s a very big A. I should be sorry to have any boodle about me with that man in the house.

Raffles entirely disagreed with me. He shook his head over my conventional view.

Human nature was a board of checkers; why not reconcile one’s self to alternate black and white?

Why desire to be all one thing or all the other, like our forefathers on the stage or in the old-fashioned fiction? For his part, he enjoyed himself on all squares of the board, and liked the light the better for the shade.

“Of course not,” assented Raffles, “or there would be no need for us to bolt; but if we should have to bolt, Tuesday morning is our time, when this ship has got to sail, whatever happens. But I don’t anticipate any violence.

Violence is a confession of terrible incompetence.

In all these years how many blows have you known me to strike? Not one, I believe; but I have been quite ready to kill my man every time, if the worst came to the worst.”