Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me.
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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.
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It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?
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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.
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There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.
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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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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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Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.
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My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!
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You know how easily and suddenly these things happen, beginning in playful teasing and ending in something a little warmer than friendship. You squeeze the slender arm which is passed through yours, you venture to take the little gloved hand, you say good night at absurd length in the shadow of the door. It is innocent and very interesting, love trying his wings in a first little flutter.
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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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It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
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Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.
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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.
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The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.
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Dogs don't make mistakes.
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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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That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.
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So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action.
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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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When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.
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It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.
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I am engaged in answering that Italian buffoon, Mazotti, whose views upon the larval development of the tropical termites have excited my derision and contempt . . .
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Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.