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

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.