It is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war.

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.

To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.

On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.

Why should people ever take credit for charity when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion?