Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.
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Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault.
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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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His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star.
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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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It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.
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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 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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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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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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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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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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Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
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It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
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Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure.
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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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Everything comes in circles... The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.
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Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.
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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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Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.
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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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There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit.
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I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.