Arthur conan doyle quotes

Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.

There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.

Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?

I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.

Let me see. What are my other shortcomings?

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!

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

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

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.

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

I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!

To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.

Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.

We can't command our love, but we can our actions.

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

There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.

It’s every man’s business to see justice done.

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

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

You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

Even the best of us are thrown off some- times.

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

It is more than possible; it is probable.

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

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?

The soul is swayed by the waters.

One must wait till it comes.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.

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

Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.

Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.

I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.

It is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air.

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

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

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.

Anything seems commonplace, once explained.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

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

My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

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.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

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.

Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.

Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

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

When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

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.

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

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

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.

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

Anything is better than stagnation.

At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

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

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.

It is quite a three-pipe problem.

I wanted to end the world but,I'll settle for ending yours.

His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

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

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

Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.

When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

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

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.

My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

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

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

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

You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.

A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.

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?

Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.

It is not that I think or believe, but that I know.

You see, but you do not observe.

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.

Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.

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

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.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson.

I had ... come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.

There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

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

There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!

When such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.

I have taken to living by my wits.

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.

Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure.