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

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story ... Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.'' —Sherlock Holmes on John Watson's "pamphlet", "A Study in Scarlet".

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

It’s every man’s business to see justice done.

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.