Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.

A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

Let me see. What are my other shortcomings?