Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
Not invisible, but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

Arthur Conan Doyle
A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.

Arthur Conan Doyle
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

Arthur Conan Doyle
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 husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife.

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

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

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Arthur Conan Doyle
As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.

Arthur Conan Doyle
For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

Arthur Conan Doyle
I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Arthur Conan Doyle
My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining lights as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid? I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.

Arthur Conan Doyle
Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

Arthur Conan Doyle
You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle
Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home.

Arthur Conan Doyle
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without delay. Its finder has carried it off therefore to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose.

Arthur Conan Doyle
'I had,' said he, 'come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.'

Arthur Conan Doyle
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

Arthur Conan Doyle
As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

Arthur Conan Doyle