Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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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.'
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Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.
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There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.
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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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The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.
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Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.
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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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Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.
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Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
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Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.
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You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?" "For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle.
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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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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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Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
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You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.
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Living, as I do, in an educated and scientific atmosphere, I could not have conceived that the first principles of zoology were so little known. Is it possible that you do not know the elementary fact in comparative anatomy, that the wing of a bird is really the forearm, while the wing of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between?
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The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
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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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It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy.
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My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!
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I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.
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Even the best of us are thrown off some- times.
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Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
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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.