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A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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'Men die of the diseases which they have studied most,' remarked the surgeon, snipping off the end of a cigar with all his professional neatness and finish. 'It's as if the morbid condition was an evil creature which, when it found itself closely hunted, flew at the throat of its pursuer. If you worry the microbes too much they may worry you. I've seen cases of it, and not necessarily in microbic diseases either. There was, of course, the well-known instance of Liston and the aneurism; and a dozen others that I could mention.'
Arthur Conan Doyle
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When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously . . .
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The approach to the offices of Girdlestone and Co. was not a very dignified one, nor would the uninitiated who traversed it form any conception of the commercial prosperity of the firm in question.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is more than possible; it is probable.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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...Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
Arthur Conan Doyle
