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You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' The dog did nothing in the night-time.' That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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His neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a trifle dim in the eye.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without delay. Its finder has carried it off therefore to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
