Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
Science seeks knowledge. Let the knowledge lead us where it will, we still must seek it. To know once for all what we are, why we are, where we are, is that not in itself the greatest of all human aspirations?

Arthur Conan Doyle
Are you conscious of the restful influence which the stars exert? To me they are the most soothing things in Nature. I am proud to say that I don't know the name of one of them. The glamour and romance would pass away from them if they were all classified and ticketed in one's brain. But when a man is hot and flurried, and full of his own little ruffled dignities and infinitesimal misfortunes, then a star bath is the finest thing in the world.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
"I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies." "You are right," said Holmes demurely; "you do find it very hard to tackle the facts."

Arthur Conan Doyle
Is he not the celebrated author of the Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?

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
It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

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
"Not a bird my dear Roxton — not a bird?" "A beast?" "No; a reptile — a dinosaur. Nothing else could have left such a track."

Arthur Conan Doyle
The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it. I'm afraid that all the queen's horses and all the queen's men cannot avail in this matter.

Arthur Conan Doyle
"But the Solar System!" I protested. "What the deuce is it to me?" [Sherlock Holmes] interrupted impatiently: "You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me."

Arthur Conan Doyle
"No data yet," he answered. "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all of the evidence. It biases the judgment.

Arthur Conan Doyle