Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.

For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.

horses: dangerous on both ends and crafty in the middle

He [Professor Moriarty] is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.

Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. [...] It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. [...] It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?