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

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 man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.

It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.

I have taken to living by my wits.

All right, Watson. Don’t look so scared,” he muttered in a very weak voice. “It’s not as bad as it seems.” “Thank God for that!” “I’m a bit of a single-stick expert, as you know. I took most of them on my guard. It was the second man that was too much for me.” “What can I do, Holmes? Of course, it was that damned fellow who set them on. I’ll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.” “Good old Watson!(...)

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes