Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon.

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' The dog did nothing in the night-time.' That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Goresthorpe Grange is a feudal mansion - or so it was termed in the advertisement which originally brought it under my notice. Its right to this adjective had a most remarkable effect upon its price, and the advantages gained may possibly be more sentimental than real. Still, it is soothing to me to know that I have slits in my staircase through which I can discharge arrows; and there is a sense of power in the fact of possessing a complicated apparatus by means of which I am enabled to pour molten lead upon the head of the casual visitor.

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.

Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.

‎A change of work is the best rest.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

His neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a trifle dim in the eye.

Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.

Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

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?

My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?” “If I can be of use.” “Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuff — By each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.

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

"There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of handling patients," he remarked, seating himself on the table and swinging his legs. "The most obvious is that you must never let them see that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well to heel."

Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me.

When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.

Dogs don't make mistakes.

Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.

I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.

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.

Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.

As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. - Watson.

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.

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?

I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.

You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.

They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.

I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.

If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.