Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

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.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley! See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I can tell you that it is no game for children, and I will confess that, in spite of my nine campaigns, I felt myself turn pale when the first ball flashed past me.

Arthur Conan Doyle
But it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.

Arthur Conan Doyle
To Sherlock Holmes she [Irene Adler] is always the woman.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.

Arthur Conan Doyle
When a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.

Arthur Conan Doyle
When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper.
Sherlock Holmes speaking

Arthur Conan Doyle
If the man who observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each swinging clear of the other's orbit-if, I say, the man who sees this cannot realise the Creator's attributes without the help of the book of Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense. -Dr. Watson, The Sign of the Four

Arthur Conan Doyle
The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

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
What a creature he was! Never have I felt such a horse between my knees. His great haunches gathered under him with every stride, and he shot forward ever faster and faster, stretched like a greyhound, while the windbeat in my face and whistled past my ears.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

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
Nature is the true revelation of the Deity to man. The nearest green field is the inspired page from which you may read all that it is needful for you to know.

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
We had got as far as this, when who should walk in but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the taproom and had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous.

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
No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.
Sherlock Holmes speaking

Arthur Conan Doyle
My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know.

Arthur Conan Doyle