Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

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“Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi stimul ac nummos contemplar in arca.
(The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house I contemplate the coins in my strong-box.)”

“Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”

“A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.”

“The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.”

“Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.”

“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.”

“I followed you.'

I saw no one.'

That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.”

“I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?”

“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

“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.”

“What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

“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.”

“No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes”

“Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.”

“There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.”

“I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.”

“Anything is better than stagnation.”

“The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.”

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different”

“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.”

“The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

~ The Poison Belt”

“I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear for the most part to dislike me.”

“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.”

“Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.”

“When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.”

“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.”

“You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"
"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle.”

“Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.”

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

“You know my methods. Apply them.”

“When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.”

“He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.”

“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.”

“There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.”

“Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.”

“The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.”

“It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.”

“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.”

“To Sherlock Holmes she is alwayswoman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.”

“I am lost without my Boswell.”