Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.

I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial.

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. It's smell and it's color 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.

but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all. - Sherlock Holmes

A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon. There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. And now for lunch, and then for Norman Neruda. Her attack and her bowing are splendid. What's that little thing of Chopin's she plays so magnificently: Tra-la-la-lira-lira-lay.

The main thing with people of that sort is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do, they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.

Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards!

In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.

You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist out of stories.

Now, Watson,' said Holmes, (...) '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.' (...) 'You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,' said he. 'It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant.

All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep.

The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes...was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night.

Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you.

Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. - Sherlock Holmes

Who are you, then?" "My name is Sherlock Holmes." "Good Lord!" "You have heard of me, I see.

I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety.

There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans.

I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect.

It was surely well for man that he came late in the order of creation. There were powers abroad in earlier days which no courage and no mechanism of his could have met. What could his sling, his throwing-stick, or his arrow avail him against such forces as have been loose tonight? Even with a modern rifle it would be all odds on the monster.

Look at you. Why is the only woman you ever cared about a world-class criminal - are you a masochist?

My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.