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

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.

You know my methods. Apply them.

No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

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".