So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o'clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned. - Sherlock Holmes.

It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.

Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.