One must wait till it comes.

The less experienced a doctor is, the higher are his notions of professional dignity . . .

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different

Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.

A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.