Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

My job is to know what other people do not know.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.

It is only when you touch the higher that you realize how low we may be among the possibilities of creation.

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.

Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

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.

I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

Who knows, Watson? Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male.

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

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.

I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence, the question is what you can make people believe that you have done.

There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson—all else will come.

The charlatan is always the pioneer... The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow.

When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.

He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.

I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.

Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.

I have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man, Or the man who’s half a boy.

Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.

It is easy to be wise after the event.

To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

(...) My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.

A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.

It would be superfluous todrive us mad, my dear Watson

I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain, " said he. "Results without causes are much more impressive.

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.