Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

"There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of handling patients," he remarked, seating himself on the table and swinging his legs. "The most obvious is that you must never let them see that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well to heel."

Arthur Conan Doyle
I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.

Arthur Conan Doyle
As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. - Watson.

Arthur Conan Doyle
If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.

Arthur Conan Doyle
You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is all in the way of professional experience. - Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle
In the first year the Income Tax paper arrived and I filled it up to show that I was not liable. They returned the paper with 'Most unsatisfactory' scrawled across it. I wrote 'I entirely agree' under the words, and returned it once more.

Arthur Conan Doyle
We are dealing with an exceptionally astute and dangerous man... one of the most unscrupulous rascals that Australia has ever evolved — and for a young country it has turned out some very finished types.

Arthur Conan Doyle
There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Living, as I do, in an educated and scientific atmosphere, I could not have conceived that the first principles of zoology were so little known. Is it possible that you do not know the elementary fact in comparative anatomy, that the wing of a bird is really the forearm, while the wing of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between?

Arthur Conan Doyle
He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Yes, I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical are really extremely practical - so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I have my own views about Nature's methods, though I feel that it is rather like a beetle giving his

Arthur Conan Doyle
When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities.

Arthur Conan Doyle
""Dear girl," continued Bob advancing with an imbecile grin upon his countenance, which he imagined no doubt to be a seductive smile, "fly with me! Be mine! Share with me the wild free life of a barrister! Say that you return the love which consumes my heart - oh, say it!" Here Bob put his hand over a hole in his waistcoat and struck a dramatic attitude.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.

Arthur Conan Doyle
His neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a trifle dim in the eye.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.

Arthur Conan Doyle
One should always look for a possible alternative, and provide against it. It is the first rule of criminal investigation.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.

Arthur Conan Doyle
His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure—all the more intense for being held tightly in—his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.

Arthur Conan Doyle
"They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work."

Arthur Conan Doyle
One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

Arthur Conan Doyle