Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

There are no inhabitants of this land of despair. A band of Pawnees or of Blackfeet may occasionally traverse it in order to reach other hunting-grounds, but the hardiest of the braves are glad to lose sight of those awesome plains, and to find themselves once more upon their prairies.

Let me see—what are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end.

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless

These modern gramophones are a remarkable invention.

there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

I am lost without my Boswell.

In this great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining to life. There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, grey earth—above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing

And why is he here?" "Because an illustrious client has placed her piteous case in my hands. It is the Lady Eva Blackwell, the most beautiful debutante of last season.

Your life is not your own," he said. "Keep your hands off it." "What use is it to anyone?" "How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world." The

I abhor the dull routine of existence.

has not been wasted, since it has proved that he has the very strongest motives for standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, this is too serious for dawdling, especially as

capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.

yourself in doubt or in danger—

the town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and squalor. The broad street was churned up by the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of muddy snow. The sidewalks were narrow and uneven. The numerous gas-lamps served only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses, each with its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty.

Charles Augustus Milverton was a man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head, a round, plump, hairless face, a perpetual frozen smile, and two keen gray eyes, which gleamed brightly from behind broad, gold-rimmed glasses.

We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about half-way up the hill, without making a small detour to see them.

Life is full of whimsical happenings, Watson

You seem very anxious to lose your life.

her young heart was no longer her own.

I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial.

What one man can invent another can discover, said Holmes.