Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time.

It is just all the difference between happiness and misery, said Challenger with an abstracted face, still patting his wife's hand. You can swim with the tide and have peace in mind and soul, or you can thrust against it and be bruised and weary. This business is beyond us, so let us accept it as it stands and say no more.

Oh, bless you, it doesn't matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It's heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. 'Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.

Se trata del proceso de separación de los Dundas [...]. El marido era abstemio, no existía otra mujer, y el comportamiento del que se quejaba la esposa consistía en que el marido había adquirido la costumbre de rematar todas sus comidas quitándose la dentadura postiza y arrojándosela a su esposa, lo cual, estará usted de acuerdo, no es la clase de acto que se le suele ocurrir a un novelista corriente.

Some facts should be suppressed, or at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.

the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.

All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage.

Well, what are we to do now? asked MacDonald with some gruffness. Possess our souls in patience and make as little noise as possible, Holmes answered.

It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.

It is of the first importance, not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.

I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop, which was his favourite weapon.

I guess you're the same in all places, shoving your advice in when nobody asks for it.

This room is not well adapted as a cell, and Mr. Patrick Cairns occupies too large a portion of our carpet.

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson.

I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before we get to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow I can get nothing to go upon. There's plenty of thread, no doubt, but I can't get the end of it into my hand.

Let the high God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon the earth, or if we are ruled by chance.

But what will not be forgotten, and what will and should continue to obsess our imaginations, is this revelation of the possibilities of the universe, this destruction of our ignorant self-complacency, and this demonstration of how narrow is the path of our material existence and what abysses may lie upon either side of it. Solemnity and humility are at the base of all our emotions to-day. May they be the foundations upon which a more earnest and reverent race may build a more worthy temple.

beating the dead animals in the dissecting room with a stick." "Beating them with a stick!" "Yes, to see whether bruises could be made after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes." "But he is not a medical student?" "No. I have no idea what he wants to do with his studies. But here

It is very good of Lord St. Simon to honour my head by putting it on a level with his own," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing.

I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life, it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

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

Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure—these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that—or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

A sick man is but a child, and so I will treat you.