'There's no need for fiction in medicine,' remarks Foster... 'for the facts will always beat anything you fancy.'

It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this." I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself. "Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea." "The board-schools." "Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.

He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.

I am engaged in answering that Italian buffoon, Mazotti, whose views upon the larval development of the tropical termites have excited my derision and contempt . . .

You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.