“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.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I
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Arthur Conan Doyle 166
Scottish physician and author 1859–1930Related quotes
“A man shouldn't die with no understanding of why he's been murdered”
The Acts of Caine, Heroes Die (The Acts of Caine: Act of Violence) (1998)
Heroes Die (1998)
Context: It's customary, at times like this, to say a few words. A man shouldn't die with no understanding of why he's been murdered. I do not pride myself on my eloquence, and so I will keep this simple.
Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a paraphrase of one found in a sermon of Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), printed in Golden Lectures (1855) :
: There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others—operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others. ...Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.
Misattributed
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 201.
Finding Life after Death http://richardcarlson.com/RC_Words/life_after_death.html
What About the Big Stuff (2002)
Context: When our familiar world falls apart, especially through the pain of death — of losing someone we love — we are shaken at our very core. We realize, perhaps for the first time, that there is no easy or quick way out. We must go through the process, which will be a little different for each of us — the common thread being pain.
In the midst of that inner struggle, however, something begins to happen. There are the moments that are most resisted — and there is extreme pain. Simultaneously, however, there are voluntary or involuntary bursts of letting go. Perhaps the pain is too much for the moment — the mind takes a break, shuts down, or wakes up, I’m not really sure. But in those moments, there is a release from the pain; an acknowledgment that although we don’t understand it, and it hurts like hell, the universe somehow knows what it’s doing.
Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic.
