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.

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

It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

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

Ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity... is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.