Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.
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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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The fair sex is your department.
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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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Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.
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The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.
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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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To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.
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We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.
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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 a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
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Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.
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Violence is sometimes a duty.
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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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It is not that I think or believe, but that I know.
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The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it. I'm afraid that all the queen's horses and all the queen's men cannot avail in this matter.
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By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuff — By each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.
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Why should people ever take credit for charity when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion?
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I love and am loved by a better man than he.
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We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands.
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If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.
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Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me, amplified.
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And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.
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But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.