Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for romance anywhere.

Watson: Get that out of my face. Sherlock: It's not in your face, it's in my hand. Watson: Get what's in your hand out of my face.

A mistake would have been fatal. -Sherlock Holmes-

Apparently the age of romance was not dead, and there was common ground upon which the wildest imaginings of the novelist could meet the actual scientific investigations of the searcher for truth.

a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

There are instincts which are deeper than reason. — Arthur Conan Doyle, from "The Nightmare Room," Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . (Delphi Classics; 6 edition May 13, 2011)

Wadley sent a message: 'The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would do them the honor to come to their next meeting.' The answer was unprintable. You don't say? Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run: 'Professor Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute, and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.

Could he throw no light?

Yo creo que, normalmente, el cerebro de una persona es como un pequeño ático vacío en el que hay que meter los muebles que uno prefiera.

It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it.

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 color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it.

But consider!' I said earnestly. 'Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle.

I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked will still wander free, then alas for the world! Alleyne

Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment. "The goose, Mr. Holmes! The goose, sir!" he gasped. "Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off through the kitchen window?" Holmes twisted himself round upon the sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face.

Pray interrupt me if there is any inference which is not perfectly clear to you. 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 vital. Your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. -Sherlock Holmes- -The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes-

God help us!" said Holmes after a long silence. "Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter's words, and say, 'There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.' 

I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.

it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

Sterndale sprang to his feet. "I believe that you are the devil himself!" he cried. Holmes smiled at the compliment.

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. "Eglow, Eglonitz—here we are, Egria. It

will, we hope, be incapable. There only remains Mrs. Toller, who might give the alarm. If you could send her into the cellar on some errand, and then turn the key upon her, you would facilitate matters immensely." "I

I confess that I covet your skull.

The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.