Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.
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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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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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Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?
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It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?
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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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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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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.
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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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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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To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.
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I love and am loved by a better man than he.
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It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
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There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.
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The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.
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I followed you.' I saw no one.' That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.
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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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For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
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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 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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If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.
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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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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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Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.