Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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?
Arthur Conan Doyle
What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence, the question is what you can make people believe that you have done.
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
Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.
Arthur Conan Doyle
My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”—Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Arthur Conan Doyle
The charlatan is always the pioneer... The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
Arthur Conan Doyle
My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?''No, I have not.''Well, well, such is fame!
Arthur Conan Doyle
You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Dark nights are unpleasant," "Yes, for strangers to travel,""The clouds are heavy.""Yes, a storm is approaching.
Arthur Conan Doyle
To a great mind, nothing is little.
Arthur Conan Doyle
...above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
No ghosts need
Arthur Conan Doyle
Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every other consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.
Arthur Conan Doyle
All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind.""Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition.
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
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
We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.
Arthur Conan Doyle
When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.
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
What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
Arthur Conan Doyle
To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed?
Arthur Conan Doyle
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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. 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. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The statesman received us with that old-fashioned courtesy for which he is remarkable, and seated us on the two luxuriant lounges on either side of the fireplace. Standing on the rug between us, with his slight, tall figure, his sharp features, thoughtful face, and curling hair prematurely tinged with gray, he seemed to represent that not too common type, a nobleman who is in truth noble.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Exactly. Since it is morally justifiable, I have only to consider the question of personal risk. Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this, when a lady is in most desperate need of his help?
Arthur Conan Doyle
It would be superfluous todrive us mad, my dear Watson
Arthur Conan Doyle
I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain," said he. "Results without causes are much more impressive.
Arthur Conan Doyle
He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man,Or the man who’s half a boy.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence?
Arthur Conan Doyle
The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
Arthur Conan Doyle
He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer- excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained observer to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H." It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Some believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our unending search, our abiding desire for immortality.
Arthur Conan Doyle
To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.
Arthur Conan Doyle
My job is to know what other people do not know.
Arthur Conan Doyle
No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
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
It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question.
Arthur Conan Doyle
He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.
Arthur Conan Doyle