Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.

You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?" "No, indeed!" "You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged." "My dear fellow! I congrat-" "To Milverton's housemaid." "My dear Holmes!" "I wanted information, Watson.

It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

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

Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.