Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes - Page 2

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
Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?
Arthur Conan Doyle
The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.
Arthur Conan Doyle
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I assure you, my good Lestrade, that I have an excellent reason for everything that I do.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is only goodness which gives extra...
Arthur Conan Doyle
Who knows, Watson? Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It’s every man’s business to see justice done.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.
Arthur Conan Doyle
You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchw
Arthur Conan Doyle
Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Well,' said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, 'it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?''Experience,' said Holmes, laughing. 'Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the situation.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The future was with Fate. The present was our own.~ The Poison Belt
Arthur Conan Doyle
Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for romance anywhere.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom." "Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Some friend of yours, perhaps?""Except yourself I have none," he answered. "I do not encourage visitors.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. It's smell and it's color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
Arthur Conan Doyle
That's rather a broad idea," I remarked. "One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature," he answered.
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
Now, Watson," said he, "we have picked up two clues this morning. One is the bicycle with the Palmer tyre, and we see what that has led to. The other is the bicycle with the patched Dunlop. Before we start 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
Art in the blood is liable to take the strongest forms
Arthur Conan Doyle
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Yes, the setting (Dartmoor) is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed, The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
You know, Watson, I don't mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal. --Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
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
Arthur Conan Doyle
No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing," mused the Inspector, "Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times... What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off the treasure! How's that?""On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside," said Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
As a rule, 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
From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my
Arthur Conan Doyle
In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
When a man does a queer thing, or two queer things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he does is queer, then you begin to wonder
Arthur Conan Doyle
She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time.
Arthur Conan Doyle
[O]n general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I don't take much stock of detectives in novels - chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not business.
Arthur Conan Doyle
One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s heroes still may strut, Dickens’s delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray’s worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?
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
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
...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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The country inspector's face had shown his intense amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes' investigation. At first he had shown some disposition to assert his own position, but now he was overcome with admiration, and ready to follow without question wherever Holmes lead.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It was amusing to me to see how the detective's overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child asking questions of its teacher.
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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. You may pine for your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You may, and will, give it the preference when you can. But the dull days come, and the rainy days come, and always you are driven to fill up the chinks of your reading with the worthy books which wait so patiently for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day which marks an epoch in your life, you understand the difference. You see, like a flash, how the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From that day onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as you were before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to you; it builds itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past.
Arthur Conan Doyle
What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.
Arthur Conan Doyle
My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.
Arthur Conan Doyle