Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

One must wait till it comes.

Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper. ~ Sherlock Holmes

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the truth?

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.

It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild and menacing.

You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.

"Watson: "You may be right."

Holmes: "The probability lies in that direction.

A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other… So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.

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

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.

...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.

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

For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.

My business is that of every other good citizen - to uphold the law.