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Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
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Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, KStJ, DL was a British writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. Originally a physician, in 1887 he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr. Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer; his non-Sherlockian works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste.

✵ 22. May 1859 – 7. July 1930  •  Other names Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Arthur Conan Doyle: 166 quotes113 likes

Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

“The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

“But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

“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

Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

“One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“So tomorrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

“Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“His Ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“We can but try.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

“… while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

“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 book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Let me see. What are my other shortcomings?”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Valley of Fear

Source: The Valley of Fear

“Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. (…)”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: Volume 1

“There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Case of Identity

Source: A Case of Identity

“I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

“Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

Source: The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

“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

“This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“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

“One must wait till it comes.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

“It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles

“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 book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor

“It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: The Bruce-Partington Plans

“There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“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

“It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Naval Treaty

Source: The Naval Treaty

“It is easy to be wise after the event.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

“I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Stark Munro Letters

The Stark Munro Letters (1894)

“Because it is my desire. Is that not enough?"

[Sherlock Holmes on his. ]”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Dying Detective

Source: The Adventure of the Dying Detective

“Quite simple, my dear Watson”

Arthur Conan Doyle

“I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Stark Munro Letters

The Stark Munro Letters (1894)

“At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Quoted in Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food (New York: Norton &amp; Company, 2009, ISBN 978-0-393-06595-4), p. 137 https://books.google.it/books?id=vqucAwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA137&amp;lpg=PA137 <br class="br">Attributed

“The whole doctrine of original sin, the Fall, the vicarious Atonement, the placation of the Almighty by blood—all this is abhorrent to me. The spirit-guides do not insist upon these aspects of religion.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Quoted in The Life of Faith by Dr. A. T. Schofield, which was quoted in Heresies Exposed by William C. Irvine (Loizeaux Brothers, Neptune, New Jersey, 1921, p. 179)
Attributed

“I can tell you that it is no game for children, and I will confess that, in spite of my nine campaigns, I felt myself turn pale when the first ball flashed past me.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Of cricket) Adventures of Gerard (1903

“The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Boer War (1902)