Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.
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It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.
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The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
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Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!
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Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.
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Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.
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The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell.
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I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.
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You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! - and that! - and that! - and that!
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Three quiet days. This hell fiend is like a cat with a mouse. She lets me loose only to pounce upon me again. I am never so frightened as when every thing is still.
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Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.
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It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.
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The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
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Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
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It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?
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What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
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I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.
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The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.
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Even the best of us are thrown off some- times.
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Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.
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My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!
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A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.
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A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the theory of reincarnation.
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As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.