Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes - Page 3

Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure- these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.
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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
My mind," he said, "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 then 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
A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other until 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. I have marveled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I would go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.
Arthur Conan Doyle
To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson—all else will come.
Arthur Conan Doyle
How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!
Arthur Conan Doyle
How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!
Arthur Conan Doyle
Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Anything is better than stagnation.
Arthur Conan Doyle
‎A change of work is the best rest.
Arthur Conan Doyle
She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.
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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I do not think that life has any joy to offer so complete, so soul-filling as that which comes upon the imaginative lad, whose spare time is limited, but who is able to snuggle down into a corner with his book, knowing that the next hour is all his own. And how vivid and fresh it all is!
Arthur Conan Doyle
I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.
Arthur Conan Doyle
To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.
Arthur Conan Doyle
A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Well, Watson, what do you make of it?'Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.''I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me', said he.
Arthur Conan Doyle
...Recognising, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--""Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" Asked Holmes, with some asperity."To the man of precised, scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.""Then had you not better consult him?""I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--""Just a little," said Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake.- Watson
Arthur Conan Doyle
By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.''I shall be delighted.''You don't mind breaking the law?''Not in the least.''Nor running a chance of arrest?''Not in a good cause.''Oh, the cause is excellent!''Then I am your man.''I was sure that I might rely on you.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is only when you touch the higher that you realize how low we may be among the possibilities of creation.
Arthur Conan Doyle
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland
Arthur Conan Doyle
There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there, And warmly debated the matter; The Orthodox said that it came from the air, And the Heretics said from the platter. They argued it long and they argued it strong, And I hear they are arguing now; But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese, Not one of them thought of a cow.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there, And warmly debated the matter; The Orthodox said that it came from the air, And the Heretics said from the platter. They argued it long and they argued it strong, And I hear they are arguing now; But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese, Not one of them thought of a cow.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.10. Plays the violin well.11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?
Arthur Conan Doyle
I think that I had better go, Holmes.""Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this."I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself."Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea.""The board-schools.""Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
Arthur Conan Doyle
What a lovely thing a rose is!"He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. 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. Its smell and its 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
Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is easy to be wise after the event.
Arthur Conan Doyle
You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?
Arthur Conan Doyle
The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.
Arthur Conan Doyle
There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?
Arthur Conan Doyle