Amberley excelled at chess - a mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.

...Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.

We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

A man with so large a brain must have something in it.

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.