Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

“You know my methods, Watson. There was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry. And it ended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those which I had expected.”

“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”

“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”

“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.”

“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.”

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”

“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”

“No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.”

“By heavens, Holmes,” I said, half rising, “I believe that they are really after us.” “No, it’s not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars.”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

“I’m not a psychopath, I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.”

“Excellent! I cried. “Elementary,” said he.

“How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!”

Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered: “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

“The game is afoot.”

“I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.”

“There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.”

“You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”

“Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”

“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”

“I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?”

“To a great mind, nothing is little,′ remarked Holmes, sententiously.”

“Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.′ That’s a rather broad idea,′ I remarked. One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,′ he answered.”

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

“Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”

“I presume nothing.”

“It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”

“There’s a light in a woman’s eyes that speaks louder than words.”

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

“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.”

“Yes, we should have a full day to-day,” he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action.”

“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”

“It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.”

“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.”

“That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.”

“The past and the present are within my field of inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.”

“You may be right.” “The probability lies in that direction.”

“When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. “Well?” said he. “Do you not find it interesting?” “To a collector of fairy-tales.”

“I must thank you,” said Sherlock Holmes, “for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.”

″‘Then let me have the private ones.’ He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.”

“His face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down.”

“If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him.”

“Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.”

“For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh.”

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.”

“What further inferences may we draw?” “Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!”

“My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic.”