The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.

Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.

...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.

It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.

It is more than possible; it is probable.

The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.

A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.