Top 430 Quotes & Sayings by Arthur Conan Doyle - Page 3

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

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

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

Holy Men! Holy Cabbages! Holy Bean Pods! What do they do but live and suck in sustenance and grow fat?

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.

I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.

There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.

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.

Violence recoils on the violent.

By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuff — By each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.

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

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

Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.

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.

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

Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days. God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them.

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

We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

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

It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.

“How ever did you see that?” “Because I looked for it.”

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

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

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

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

I have my own views about Nature's methods, though I feel that it is rather like a beetle giving his

The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it. I'm afraid that all the queen's horses and all the queen's men cannot avail in this matter.

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon.

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

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.

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

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.

The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.

Let me see. What are my other shortcomings?

What one man can invent, another can discover.

Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.

I have taken to living by my wits.

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

The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.

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

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.

His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure--all the more intense for being held tightly in--his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?

You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

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

It is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war.

There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?

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

It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy.

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.

It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.

...it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away... from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.

Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' The dog did nothing in the night-time.' That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.

It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

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