Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

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

The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today?

Several incidents in my life have convinced me of spiritual interposition - of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can.

Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

There was a brisk northern wind, heavy and wet with the salt of the sea, and he felt, as he turned his face to it, fresh life and strength surging in his blood and bracing his limbs.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.

Dogs don't make mistakes.

My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.

And once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complexity of human life so pletifuly presents.

Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home.

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the streets and drifts across the dun-colored houses…. What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

We are dealing with an exceptionally astute and dangerous man… one of the most unscrupulous rascals that Australia has ever evolved—and for a young country it has turned out some very finished types.

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

"Excellent!" I [Watson] cried."Elementary," said he [Holmes].

Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long glinting dragon-flies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.

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

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know.

You know my methods, Watson.