There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different

An absence of antecedents and of relatives is sometimes an aid rather than an impediment to social advancement . . .

Anything is better than stagnation.