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

Several incidents in my life have convinced me of spiritual interposition - of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can.

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.

A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.

When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" “His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.