Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
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.
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.
There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.
I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple.
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?
How sweet the morning air is! ...How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.
Holy Men! Holy Cabbages! Holy Bean Pods! What do they do but live and suck in sustenance and grow fat?
The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.
Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.
The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.
The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.
Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.
They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.
My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.
Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done.
