Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position.
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It’s every man’s business to see justice done.
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To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.
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I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.
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It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.
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How sweet the morning air is! ...How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!
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We had got as far as this, when who should walk in but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the taproom and had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous.
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The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.
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Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?
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Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.
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There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.
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Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.
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The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when Holmes became a specialist in crime.
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Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.
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You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.
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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for...
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While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.
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Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.
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If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.
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The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today?
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By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.' 'I shall be delighted.' 'You don't mind breaking the law?' 'Not in the least.' 'Nor running a chance of arrest?' 'Not in a good cause.' 'Oh, the cause is excellent!' 'Then I am your man.' 'I was sure that I might rely on you.
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Violence is sometimes a duty.