Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.

Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.