Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Violence is sometimes a duty.
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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.
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Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.
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If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.
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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.
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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.
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The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.
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Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.
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Several incidents in my life have convinced me of spiritual interposition - of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can.
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Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.
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Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.
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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!
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It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.
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I love and am loved by a better man than he.
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I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple.
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His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure – all the more intense for being held tightly in – his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.
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I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.
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...it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away... from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.
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Brothers are a blessing for one thing. There is no possibility of any young lady getting unreasonably conceited if she be endowed with them.
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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.
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You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
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The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.
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Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.
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There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.