Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!

Arthur Conan Doyle
Pon my word Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. We have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method...

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is... an alteration of perspective, a shifting of our sense of proportion, a vivid realization that we are insignificant and evanescent creatures, existing on sufferance and at the mercy of the first chill wind from the unknown.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.

Arthur Conan Doyle
"Iguanodons," said Summerlee. "You'll find their footmarks all over the Hastings sands, in Kent, and in Sussex. The South of England was alive with them when there was plenty of good lush green-stuff to keep them going. Conditions have changed, and the beasts died. Here it seems that the conditions have not changed, and the beasts have lived."

Arthur Conan Doyle
The ideal scientific mind should be capable of thinking out a point of abstract knowledge in the interval between its owner falling from a balloon and reaching the earth. Men of this strong fiber are needed to form the conquerors of nature and the bodyguard of truth.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The true scientific mind is not to be tied down by its own conditions of time and space. It builds itself an observatory erected upon the border line of present, which separates the infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its sallies even to the beginning and to the end of all things.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Not invisible, but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important.

Arthur Conan Doyle
We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork, said Dr. Mortimer. Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation.

Arthur Conan Doyle
If a gentleman walks into my room smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The sole purpose of physical theory is to provide a representation and classification of experimental laws; the only test permitting us to judge a physical theory and pronounce it good or bad is the comparison between the consequences of this theory and the experimental laws it has to represent and classify.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

Arthur Conan Doyle
A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim... to represent as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible a group of experimental laws.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The human brain is capable of only one strong emotion at a time, and if it be filled with curiosity or scientific enthusiasm, there is no room for fear.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.

Arthur Conan Doyle
If you will find the facts, perhaps others may find the explanation.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I can hardly hope, by the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my meaning to those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from the columns of a daily newspaper.

Arthur Conan Doyle
What horrible work this chemistry is! Look at my frock! It is ruined. And this dreadful smell!

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
A further knowledge of facts is necessary before I would venture to give a final and definite opinion.

Arthur Conan Doyle
We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil

Arthur Conan Doyle
Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture where the most logical mind may be at fault.

Arthur Conan Doyle
To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today?

Arthur Conan Doyle