Suspicion

“ Who has not, at some time or other of his life, experienced the force of that casuistry which is begotten of suspicion? Who has not felt how completely reason is mastered by the subtle assaults of a wily ingenuity which, whilst combining the false and the true, the possible and impossible together, makes out a mock array of evidence almost too strong for a doubt? ”

“ For, like some poisons, an atom of suspicion is as fatal as the largest quantity, Nay, perhaps, even more surely so, for against great suspicion the mind often takes arms and makes valiant head; but a little doubt, by its timid and hesitant demeanor, disarms opposition, and is readily entertained. ”

“ He knows of the cursed mistake in that testamentary deed.—A base device to get it into his hands for inspection. (Advances to the front, and stands thoughtfully with his arms across.) Suspicious! had I not been less suspicious than most people, I should have been aware of it before.—O that there were less cause for suspicion in this vile world! Must we pass through it like infants or simpletons to be happy? what is reason given us for but to be a defence and a guard?—It may, indeed, occasionally deceive us. ”

“ If you had committed murder—if I had committed murder,—should we not either of us, have denied it as resolutely as you denied this? If the circumstances are such as to cause a man—any man—to be suspected at all, no words of his can be worth anything whatsoever on the subject; and you must admit that, the circumstances being as they were, it was impossible that the first suspicion should not have fallen on you. ”

“ The ever-ready suspicion of evil, the gnawing suspicion that lurks in our hearts, flowed out into the stillness round him--into the stillness profound and dumb, and made it appear untrustworthy and infamous, like the placid and impenetrable mask of an unjustifiable violence. ”

“ Suspicion turns to them especially when an unknown criminal has committed a crime the accomplishment of which required a particularly evil nature and where the deed of itself called forth general indignation. In that case, once a deformed person is suspected, grounds of suspicion are not difficult to find; a few collect more as a rolling ball does snow. After that the sweet proverb: “Vox populi, vox dei,” drives the unfortunate fellow into a chaos of evidential grounds of suspicion which may all be reduced to the fact that he has red hair or a hump. ”

“ My writings have been called a school of suspicion and especially of disdain, more happily, also, a school of courage and even of audacity. Indeed, I myself do not think that any one has ever looked at the world with such a profound suspicion ”

“ Who will dare to suspect a person that goes as you do, talks great, the Knight of the Golden Rock ? If there shall happen to be any saucy fellow impudent enough to dare to suspect you, the suspicion will rather be cast upon somebody that went away the day before. There will be a disorder among the master and the servants, and do you behave yourself as a person wholly unconcerned. ”

“ But, sir, suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the preservation of the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds: should it fall on me, I am contented: conscious rectitude is a powerful consolation. ”

“ yet a suspicion was sown with the thought, and suspicions, as we all know, are weeds of the mind which grow of themselves, and most rapidly when least wanted. ”

“ When you know the secret of the letters, the truth is much nearer than you think; and you would have already named the criminal if the horror of his crime had not been so great as to divert all suspicion from him. ”

“ He expects the next man who meets him in the street will accuse him to his face. And not unfrequent is it, that by the very alarm and uneasiness, the strange anxiety and restlessness which he betrays, the eye of suspicion is turned upon him, and a clue is furnished, which leads to the disclosure of his crime. ”

“ The spirit of distrust and suspicion, which, in our free country, always follows with unremitting vigilance, the measures and the ministers of government, the emotions of wounded pride, of disappointed ambition, and, in some instances of personal enmity, combined to form the stimulus which actuated the conduct of many of the best and ablest characters among them. ”

“ He thinks, that, henceforth, the finger of suspicion will be pointed at him for ever; he sees imaginary doubts and dreads in every one's heart towards him; he feels the mere insinuation, as the first stain upon a high and noble name. ”

“ Place yourself in my position, and then yourself what you would have done. Suspicion is one of those hideous things which all men should be most specially careful not only how they entertain at all, but how they give expression to. ”

“ We entertain a Suspicion concerning any Matter of Fact, when the Witnesses contradict each other; when they are but few, or of a suspicious Character; when they have an Interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their Testimony with Doubt and Hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent Asseverations. There are many other Pariculars of the same Kind, which may diminish or destroy the Force of any Argument, deriv'd from human Testimony. ”

“ Yes, Suspicion;—the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being. This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and lowly. ”

“ You endeavor to throw suspicion on a man who never injured you in the slightest degree. You insult me in insulting my friend, sir. Suspicion is not always such an easy thing to shake off as it has been in this instance. I, on my side, might ask what you were doing walking about the passages in your socks at four o'clock this morning? ”

“ Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer. ”

“ I am conscious that many acts of mine must have inevitably given rise to painful suspicions—suspicions which, indeed, upon one occasion, you very properly communicated to me. I have got two letters from a quarter which commands respect, containing information as to the course by which I may be enabled to prove the negative of all the crimes which even the most credulous suspicion could lay to my charge. ”

“ But the fact of knowledge, a jury might infer from very slight evidence, and my client’s seeming bastardy and strange ignorance of her father, and of her mother even, beyond the certainty that she once lived and cared well for her young days, were better fitted to excite suspicion and clothe her in the garb of an adventurer, than to secure pity or be urged as arguments of innocence. ”

“ And usually, my dear, the suspicion is unwarranted. The most commonplace people frequently impress you with the idea that they are other than what they seem, are leading double lives, or are endeavoring to conceal some irregularity of conduct. ”

“ Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. ”

“ Men and women eaten up with suspicion. So that—I think you've never encountered this, but beware of it if you do—so that everything happening within their purview must be bent to the shape of that suspicion ”

“ But one becomes tired of explanations. I saw no reason why I should offer another to people so ready to suspect me, and who themselves were under some cloud of suspicion that caused detectives to take undue interest in them. ”

“ Sometimes, as in others, suspects were brought, under judicial order, to view or touch the body. Frequently, however, the occurrence is spontaneous, and serves to excite or direct suspicion where none existed before. ”

“ Having before me a person who excites my suspicion, I am inclined to think him guilty on certain evidence, but I fear to judge lest I should be in error, because there is evidence also of innocence. If my suspicion is based on good grounds, it is natural and lawful ”

“ For her presence or words might, in some way she could not foresee or even comprehend, bring increased danger upon the head of the accused man, already weighted down with a crushing load of suspicion, which grew heavier every hour. ”

“ These admonitions are to be founded upon a suspicion of guilt excited by public rumour, and after an investigation to be made by one having due authority, with the result of establishing a reasonable basis for the suspicion. ”

“ It is an axiom of the detective service, that untrained suspicion generally takes the wrong scent, and that it usually saves time to look in some other direction for the culprit, than in that pointed out by the accuser. ”

“ A good many folks are crooked, at times, and the only wonder is that a clever man like you has tripped and allowed himself to fall under suspicion. Suspicion leads to investigation—when it's followed up—and investigation, in such cases, leads to—jail. ”

“ It would be folly, of course, to suggest that there is no such thing as justifiable suspicion. If you see a man in a Tube lift with his hand on some old gentleman's watch-chain, you are justified in suspecting that his object is something less innocent than to persuade the old gentleman to become a Plymouth Brother. ”

“ And therewith rushed into his mind the conviction that everything was thus explained. No man ever yet entertained an unhappy suspicion, but straightway an army of proofs positive came crowding to the service of the lie. ”

“ And when once they are brought into a suspicion of one point, which they formerly held, they quickly suspect all the rest; grow into a suspicion and disaffection to the persons whom they did before most highly value. ”

“ See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath! ⁠84
He that but fears the thing he would not know
Hath by instinct knowledge from others' eyes
That what he fear'd is chanced. ”

“ It is right that suspicion against them should be rendered impossible, that no reasonable person should have ground for the supposition that they have committed or connived at an atrocity at which the body shudders and the mind is appalled. ”

“ Robinson advises the purchase of Consolidated Stumers: is he trying to make us "hold the baby"? Suspicion is epidemic. What the world wants is a host of missionary spirits to say, "For goodness' sake do drop suspicion for a while and believe in your fellow man! ”

“ I was just thinking as I set here how it all comes of people being suspicious of one another. Now I've always held that the world would be a better place if there wasn't no suspicion in it. Nine times out of ten the suspicion ain't got a leg to stand on—if suspicion can be said to have a leg. ”

“ Their impatience may be traced to a different cause—a suspicion, awakened at an early period of the trial, and which, during its progress, has been gradually growing stronger; until it has at length assumed almost the shape of a belief. ”

“ Some unguarded expression or act, even on the part of those who are practising the concealment, or some information communicated by those who are not in the secret, perhaps by children, or some evidence casually seen, very often either reveals the truth, or awakens suspicion and prompts inquiry which the most skilful equivocation may not be able to elude. The very air that is assumed in carrying on the deception often defeats the object. ”

“ If, on the contrary, I take no kind of notice of the man I fancy guilty, if I do not have him arrested, if I in no way set him on his guard—but if the unfortunate creature is hourly, momentarily, possessed by the suspicion that I know all, that I do not lose sight of him either by night or by day, that he is the object of my indefatigable vigilance—what do you ask will take place under these circumstances? ”

“ In the two instances given above, fear, suspicion, hatred, give rise in one case to a delusional system in the mind of an isolated individual, and in the other to the circulation of an unfounded rumor by men who in their right minds would, to say the least, carefully scrutinize the evidence for such a story before permitting it to be published. ”

“ I have often heard say, that is in good company—and I have kept good company in my time—that suspicion is king’s evidence of a narrow and uncultivated mind, on which account I am suspicious of nobody, not even of my own husband, whom some people would think I have a right to be suspicious of, seeing that on his account I once refused a lord ”

“ Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything more than mere suspicion has been reached, the disloyal persons themselves, and the government, are the only parties who possess the information. ”

“ Suspicion is the pisenest yarb that grows. The folks that could 16 suspect old ‘Forty-niner’ of wrong things’ll be plumb ready to watch out for one another. Somebody’ll be caught nappin’, sure. ’Tisn’t in human natur’ to walk upright all the time, and it’s foolish to expect it. ”

“ Nib. Nay prithee now, Tim [7] Trifle, what do you understand by the word Suspicion?
Trif. Dear Nick, every Mortal knows what Suspicion means; Suspicion comes from Suspicio, that is when any Person suspects another.
Nib. Well I won't dispute your Definition but upon my Honour I think it should have been the Jealous Husband.
Trif. He, he, lud, Nibble, that would have been the most absurd Title in the Creation. Well Nick, have you anything else in the Play to find fault with?
Nib. Yes, I think Ranger's Dress is another egregious Fault in it.
Trif. His Dress a Fault in the Play? ”

“ Assuming even that he may be in a position to account for his syncope by illness or the stifling atmosphere of the locality, he has none the less given rise to suspicion! He has lied incomparably, but he has counted without nature. Here is the pitfall! Again, a man off his guard, from an unwary disposition, may delight in mystifying another who suspects him, and may wantonly pretend to be the very criminal wanted by the authorities; in such a case, he will represent the person in question a little too closely, he will place his foot a little too naturally. ”