Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen.... And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact.

~ Sherlock Holmes

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

Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

presume nothing

I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.

"Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind."
"Then possibly my answer has crossed yours."

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

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.

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

"Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."

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 know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

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