Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.

Arthur Conan Doyle
We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know.

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
You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

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 simpler one is at hand.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple.

Arthur Conan Doyle
"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing," answered Holmes thoughtfully. "It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different."

Arthur Conan Doyle
I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.

Arthur Conan Doyle
From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

Arthur Conan Doyle
A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the theory of reincarnation.

Arthur Conan Doyle
One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell. Picture to yourself the unilateral development - the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!

Arthur Conan Doyle
I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the streets and drifts across the dun-colored houses.... What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

Arthur Conan Doyle
The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.

Arthur Conan Doyle
If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o'-the-wisps of the imagination.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is the unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars.

Arthur Conan Doyle
There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Holy Men! Holy Cabbages! Holy Bean Pods! What do they do but live and suck in sustenance and grow fat?

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
It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy.

Arthur Conan Doyle