Top 430 Quotes & Sayings by Arthur Conan Doyle
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British writer Arthur Conan Doyle.
Last updated on November 24, 2024.
Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.
We can't command our love, but we can our actions.
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.
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.
Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
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.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.
The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.
I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.
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.
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
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.
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.
The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
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.
A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.
Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.
Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.
As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.
A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.
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.
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
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.
From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.
I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.
The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
You see, but you do not observe.
Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.
You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
One must wait till it comes.
There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.
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.
When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.
Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.
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 seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!
The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.
Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!
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?
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
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.
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?
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
When you have eliminated the impossible, what is left, no matter how unlikely, is the truth.
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