Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

the little things are infinitely the most important.

Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do." This was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him?

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.

really was the most tactless person upon earth,—a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self.

while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

Where is your warrant?" Holmes half drew a revolver from his pocket. "This will have to serve till a better one comes." "Why, you're a common burglar." "So you might describe me," said Holmes cheerfully. "My companion is also a dangerous ruffian. And together we are going through your house.

In any case, Watson, you have turned out to be a prize flat-mate. I couldn't have asked for better.

I have seen too much not to know that the impressions of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

My profession is its own reward

Science of Deduction

Don't forget, Watson. You won't fail me. You never did fail me. No doubt there are natural enemies which limit the increase of the creatures. You and I, Watson, we have done our part. Shall the world, then, be overrun by oysters? No, no; horrible! You'll convey all that is in your mind.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning, I assure you that the most winning woman i ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.

above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.

It was a September evening, and not yet seven o'clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare.

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.

From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper, and old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal.

Crime is a commonplace, existence is a commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.

Holmes," I cried, "this is impossible." "Admirable!" he said. "A most illuminating remark. It IS impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?

You really an automaton – a calculating machine. There is something positively inhuman in you at times.

It's true that you set us on the right track; but you'll own now that it was more by good luck than good guidance.

there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.

Sometimes I think that it is only the monstrous conceit of mankind which makes him think that all this stage was erected for him to strut upon.

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings.

Das Leben ist unendlich seltsamer als alles, was der menschliche Geist erfinden könnte.