Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.

There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.

My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.

Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems.

Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.

Anything seems commonplace, once explained.

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!

Everything comes in circles. [...] The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.

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

The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today?

Ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity... is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.

I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?

Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.

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 is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.

Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.

Anything is better than stagnation.

Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper. ~ Sherlock Holmes

Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. (...)

It is all in the way of professional experience.

It is quite a three-pipe problem.

"Dr. Munro, sir," said he, "I am a walking museum. You could fit what ISN'T the matter with me on to the back of a -- visiting card. If there's any complaint you want to make a special study of, just you come to me, sir, and see what I can do for you. It's not every one that can say that he has had cholera three times, and cured himself by living on red pepper and brandy."

The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.

By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.' 'I shall be delighted.' 'You don't mind breaking the law?' 'Not in the least.' 'Nor running a chance of arrest?' 'Not in a good cause.' 'Oh, the cause is excellent!' 'Then I am your man.' 'I was sure that I might rely on you.

I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.

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

There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

If the man who observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each swinging clear of the other's orbit-if, I say, the man who sees this cannot realise the Creator's attributes without the help of the book of Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding.

Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears.

It is not that I think or believe, but that I know.

No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done.

Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.

Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

It is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air.

We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know.

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.

My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!

The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.