Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

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

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

"You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"
"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle."

Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what
had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them.

WATSON: Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.
HOLMES: if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.

I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with this case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.

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

"You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?"
"No, indeed!"
"You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged."
"My dear fellow! I congrat-"
"To Milverton's housemaid."
"My dear Holmes!"
"I wanted information, Watson."

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

We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.

My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove?

I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’
‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment.
‘Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter that night.

When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.