Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears.
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Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind." "Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.
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You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.
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The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.
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When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
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You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!" It was worth a wound -- it was worth many wounds -- to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
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We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.
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Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.
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There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
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"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur."
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Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different...
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The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.
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My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.
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Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H." It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.
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I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
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The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.
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I can tell you that it is no game for children, and I will confess that, in spite of my nine campaigns, I felt myself turn pale when the first ball flashed past me.
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You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.
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I have taken to living by my wits.
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It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.
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The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.
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My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.
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On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
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There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.