Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.
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It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.
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Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.
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I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won't do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual - that's to say, you handled it fairly well.
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It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously . . .
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Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.
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Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
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Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.
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Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.
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Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.
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I had ... come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.
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When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.
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I think that I had better go, Holmes." "Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.
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The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.
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It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.
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Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.
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There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit.
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So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o'clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.
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You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?" "No, indeed!" "You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged." "My dear fellow! I congrat-" "To Milverton's housemaid." "My dear Holmes!" "I wanted information, Watson.
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It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.
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His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star.
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Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.
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It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.
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Anything seems commonplace, once explained.