There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story ... Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.'' —Sherlock Holmes on John Watson's "pamphlet", "A Study in Scarlet".

I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

I have wrought my simple plan If I give one hour of joy To the boy who’s half a man, Or the man who’s half a boy.

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.