Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?" "On the contrary," he answered, "it would prevent me from taking a second dose of cocaine. I ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

sister died of the dropsy which had long afflicted her." "That will be for a coroner to decide. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I've had ups in my life, and I've had downs, but I've learned not to cry over spilled milk. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

If the man who observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each swinging clear of the other's orbit-if, I say, the man who sees this cannot realise the Creator's attributes without the help of the book of Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

THE RESIDENT PATIENT ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

We who claim toleration should be the first to extend it to others. I ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There were no footmarks.'
'Meaning that you saw none?'
'I assure you, sir, that there were none.'
'My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but I have never yet seen one which was committed by a flying creature. As long as the criminal remains upon two legs so long must there be some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacement which can be detected by the scientific searcher. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

With a keen eye for details, on truth prevails. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes," I cried, "this is impossible." "Admirable!" he said. "A most illuminating remark. It IS impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick; ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Indeed!" I murmured. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

That hurts my pride, Watson. It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now..."

-Sherlock Holmes-
-The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Five Orange Pips- ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Mr. Sherlock Holmes ... was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake.
- Watson ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper with the facts." "Some ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

THE REIGATE PUZZLE ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines. Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The soul is swayed by the waters. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is of the first importance not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit,
a factor in a problem. - Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is not easy to express the inexpressible, he answered with a laugh. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

an unbeliever may be as bigoted as any of the orthodox, and ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.
He took up his violin fom the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air - his own no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Pinner. "'Thank you very much,' said he; 'I fear that I underrated the difficulty of the task. This list will be of very material assistance to me.' "'It took some time,' said I. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I think that I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

For the love of his art ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Look at you. Why is the only woman you ever cared about a world-class criminal - are you a masochist? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked will still wander free, then alas for the world! Alleyne ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.' 'But ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I consider that a man's brain is originally like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge that might be useful to him gets crowded out. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius. ~ Graham Moore

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. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It was worth a wound - it was worth many wounds - to know the depth of loyalty and love that lay behind that cold mask. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

That head of yours should be for use as well as
ornament. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?" "What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?" "For my education, Holmes." "Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally, maritime London ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I followed you.'
I saw no one.'
That is what you may expect to see when I follow you. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

He seems to have declared war on the King's English as well as on the English king. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It might have driven me mad; but I was always a pretty stubborn one, so I just held on and bided my time. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him: but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting- room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Bitterness is a paralytic.
Love is a much more serious motivator. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I reached this one, said my friend, by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker-street we shall just be in time for breakfast. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The sight of a fair young girl, as frank and wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. When she had vanished from his sight, he realized that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver speculations nor any other questions could ever be of such importance to him as this new and all-absorbing one. The love which had sprung up in his heart was not the sudden, changeable fancy of a boy, but rather the wild, fierce passion of a man of strong will and imperious temper. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Before we begin to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A great brain and a huge organization have been turned
to the extinction of one man. It is crushing the nut with the
triphammer
an absurd extravagance of energy
but the nut is very
effectually crushed all the same. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logical man could understand oceans and waterfalls without having ever seen or heard of them. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

You really an automaton – a calculating machine. There is something positively inhuman in you at times. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man's handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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 exagerate one's own powers. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

It is quite a three-pipe problem. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be built on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I reached for the prescription. In a vigorous scrawl, he inked: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course. ~ Diane Setterfield

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. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GARRIDEBS ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sitting-room in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

In one of the earlier Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Arthur Conan Doyle (not yet a Sir) made an observation on logical deduction. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
There is, however, a specific flaw in that maxim. It assumes people can recognize the difference between what is impossible and what they believe is impossible. ~ Peter Clines

It's quite exciting, said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Most people, if you describe a train of events to them will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Let us see if there is justice upon
the earth, or if we are ruled by chance ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

THE VALLEY OF FEAR ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur." ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Have you read Gaboriau's works?" I asked.
"Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?"
Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. "Lecoq
was a miserable bungler," he said, in an angry
voice; "he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a text-book for detectives to teach them what to avoid. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle