Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

Violence recoils on the violent.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

It was in the days when France's power was already broken upon the seas, and when more of her three-deckers lay rotting in the Medway than were to be found in Brest harbour. But her frigates and corvettes still scoured the ocean, closely followed ever by those of her rival. At the uttermost ends of the earth these dainty vessels, with sweet names of girls or of flowers, mangled and shattered each other for the honour of the four yards of bunting which flapped from the end of their gaffs.

I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won't do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual - that's to say, you handled it fairly well.

He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.

When such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

'There's no need for fiction in medicine,' remarks Foster... 'for the facts will always beat anything you fancy.'

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

I followed you.' I saw no one.' That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.

It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.

I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’ ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment. ‘Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter that night.

Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple.

My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.

The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.

And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

The less experienced a doctor is, the higher are his notions of professional dignity . . .

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

The more outre' and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.

The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife.

I think that I had better go, Holmes." "Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.

In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved.

You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.

But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

I love and am loved by a better man than he.

I am engaged in answering that Italian buffoon, Mazotti, whose views upon the larval development of the tropical termites have excited my derision and contempt . . .

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy - those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.

The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" “His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.

Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.