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.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

Amberley excelled at chess - a mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.

Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.

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.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story ... Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.'' —Sherlock Holmes on John Watson's "pamphlet", "A Study in Scarlet".