If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?

It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.