Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

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

Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.

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.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

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

Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.

So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

It is more than possible; it is probable.

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

Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?

A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.

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

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.

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

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

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!

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.

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

The mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

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.

Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.

[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

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

I have my own views about Nature's methods, though I feel that it is rather like a beetle giving his

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.

Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.

Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.

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

Ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity... is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.

You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.

The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.

What a lovely thing a rose is!

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.

I am inclined to think -' said I. 'I should do so,' Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.

My business is that of every other good citizen - to uphold the law.