Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.

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.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

Paper tigers quake with fear when a real tiger enters the room.

No bird in a cage has ever come to know what the mountain winds feel like, by staring at the free flying birds, wishing that they would fall from the sky!

Life is a process of losing our illusions, until we finally lose the illusion that we're alive.

Effective questioning brings insight, which fuels curiosity, which cultivates wisdom.

Soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked.

Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.

The great leaders in history were great not because of what they owned or earned but because of what they gave their lives to accomplish. They made a difference!

No one knows whom the shoe pinches - no one.

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

It were better to be a soldier's widow than a coward's wife.