The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.

A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood.

...it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night.

What a creature he was! Never have I felt such a horse between my knees. His great haunches gathered under him with every stride, and he shot forward ever faster and faster, stretched like a greyhound, while the windbeat in my face and whistled past my ears.

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

Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!

You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.