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A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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What one man can invent, another can discover.
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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It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.
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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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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'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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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 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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The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.
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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The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Like all Holmes' reasoning, the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. Dr. Watson, speaking of Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know.
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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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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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
