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

Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.