Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.
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Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.
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For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.
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It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.
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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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One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.
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Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.
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I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.
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No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.
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Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.
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Anything is better than stagnation.
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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
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Hot hate is twin brother to hot love.
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I love and am loved by a better man than he.
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When such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.
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The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.
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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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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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Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.
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I do hate the City of London! It is the only thing which ever comes between us.
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Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems.
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We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.
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Violence is sometimes a duty.