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.

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

So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action.

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

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

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.