Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.

But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.

I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake. - Watson

I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.