Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet (1887)

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It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.

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
You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?" "For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems.

Arthur Conan Doyle
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know nothing.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence", returned my companion, bitterly. "The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done."

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
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
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
Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.

Arthur Conan Doyle
There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

Arthur Conan Doyle
There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

Arthur Conan Doyle
No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

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
He was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.

Arthur Conan Doyle
There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across — a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon?

Arthur Conan Doyle
Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

Arthur Conan Doyle
So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.

Arthur Conan Doyle
To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.

Arthur Conan Doyle
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

Arthur Conan Doyle