Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

By Jove! I cried; if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone. Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass. "You don't know Sherlock Holmes yet," he said; "perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.

Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life.

The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.

I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was pre-eminent in intelligence.

Kalau kausingkirkan semua yang mustahil, apa pun yang tersisa, betapapun mustahilnya, adalah kebenaran.

Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.

It is not what we know, but what we can prove.

Who knows, Watson? Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male.

For once you have fallen low. Let us see, in the future, how you can rise.

That head of yours should be for use as well as ornament.

There are in me the makings of a very fine loafer...

A fool takes in everything he comes across, so that there is no room for anything useful to find a place

She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.

I can understand. There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination, there is no horror.

Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man, it is perhaps better to take the knee of the trouser. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.

It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.

we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis.

I should like to meet him, I said. If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. I am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for the remainder of my natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?

Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret.

Do you know, Watson, said he, that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject.

He foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.

Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week. Strange, said I, how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigor.

We're at close grips at last, said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel.

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.