Anything is better than stagnation.

I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.

It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.

I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.

You see, but you do not observe.