I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.

A man with so large a brain must have something in it.

If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.