Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.' 'I shall be delighted.' 'You don't mind breaking the law?' 'Not in the least.' 'Nor running a chance of arrest?' 'Not in a good cause.' 'Oh, the cause is excellent!' 'Then I am your man.' 'I was sure that I might rely on you.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one,

Arthur Conan Doyle
There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

Arthur Conan Doyle
You know how easily and suddenly these things happen, beginning in playful teasing and ending in something a little warmer than friendship. You squeeze the slender arm which is passed through yours, you venture to take the little gloved hand, you say good night at absurd length in the shadow of the door. It is innocent and very interesting, love trying his wings in a first little flutter.

Arthur Conan Doyle
These hieroglyphics have evidently a meaning. If it is a purely arbitrary one, it may be impossible for us to solve it. If, on the other hand, it is systematic, I have no doubt that we shall get to the bottom of it.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Now, Watson, said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. You'll come with me, won't you? If I can be of use. Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H." It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.

Arthur Conan Doyle
A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

Arthur Conan Doyle
My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining lights as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid? I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone upon a land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and rotten leaves reeked and festered under the foul haze which was soaked and sodden with water. The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a size and colour never matched before - scarlet and mauve and liver and black.

Arthur Conan Doyle
While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Matilda Briggs…was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.

Arthur Conan Doyle
If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution.

Arthur Conan Doyle
There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

Arthur Conan Doyle
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
Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.

Arthur Conan Doyle
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.

Arthur Conan Doyle
And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.

Arthur Conan Doyle
"I should have more faith," he said; "I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation."

Arthur Conan Doyle
I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain. Results without causes are much more impressive.

Arthur Conan Doyle
To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

Arthur Conan Doyle