On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

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.

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

Why should people ever take credit for charity when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion?

It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.

So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action.