Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

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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
There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.

Arthur Conan Doyle
You know how often the turning down this street or that, the accepting or rejecting of an invitation, may deflect the whole current of our lives into some other channel. Are we mere leaves, fluttered hither and thither by the wind, or are we rather, with every conviction that we are free agents, carried steadily along to a definite and pre-determined end?

Arthur Conan Doyle
Any one of the larger carnivorous dinosaurs would meet the case. Among them are to be found all the most terrible types of animal life that have ever cursed the earth or blessed a museum.

Arthur Conan Doyle
On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

Arthur Conan Doyle
You have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confiding yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.

Arthur Conan Doyle
If the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.

Arthur Conan Doyle
In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon.

Arthur Conan Doyle
No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done.

Arthur Conan Doyle
He foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.

Arthur Conan Doyle
As a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of events, I am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.

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
Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You can find yourself insensibly twisting them round to suit your theories.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simple one is at hand.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.

Arthur Conan Doyle
You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! - and that! - and that! - and that!

Arthur Conan Doyle
You reasoned it out beautifully, I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Take time to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential.

Arthur Conan Doyle