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The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when Holmes became a specialist in crime.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for...
Arthur Conan Doyle
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What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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?
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is the sweetest spring within the memory of man. So green, so mild, so beautiful! Ah, what a contrast between nature without and my own soul so torn with doubt and terror!
Arthur Conan Doyle
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If the fresh facts come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?
Arthur Conan Doyle
