Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

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

Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he.

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.

You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.

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

What a lovely thing a rose is!

What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.

I am inclined to think -' said I. 'I should do so,' Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.

Ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity... is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.

A man with so large a brain must have something in it.

I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.

Great sorrow or great joy should bring intense hunger--not abstinence from food, as our novelists will have it.

My business is that of every other good citizen - to uphold the law.

One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell. Picture to yourself the unilateral development - the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!

...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.

It is quite a three-pipe problem.

Violence is sometimes a duty.

It is the sweetest spring within the memory of man. So green, so mild, so beautiful! Ah, what a contrast between nature without and my own soul so torn with doubt and terror!

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

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.

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

There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit.

Everything comes in circles. [...] The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.

That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.

Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems.

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

Brothers are a blessing for one thing. There is no possibility of any young lady getting unreasonably conceited if she be endowed with them.

Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. (...)

Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil

The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

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

When you have eliminated the impossible, what is left, no matter how unlikely, is the truth.

…but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.

There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.

The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.

Let me see. What are my other shortcomings?

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.

Why should people ever take credit for charity when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion?

If the fresh facts come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

Dogs don't make mistakes.

Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.

For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.

Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.

One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

Like all Holmes' reasoning, the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. Dr. Watson, speaking of Sherlock Holmes.

The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

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.