I do hate the City of London! It is the only thing which ever comes between us.

Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.

Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.

He [Professor Moriarty] is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.

I suppose I shall have to compound a felony as usual.

I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.

He foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.