A Scandal in Bohemia (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #1)

To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman. I have seldo

To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen.... And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

You do not know her, that she has a soul of steel. She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men.

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

...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.

I only caught a glimpse of her at the moment, but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for.

She has turned all the men’s heads down in that part. She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet.

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

When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage of it.

His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime.

I remain, dear Mr Sherlock Holmes, very truly yours.

“What a woman – oh, what a woman!” cried the King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this epistle. “Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?”

“From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly.

I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives.

…the best plans of Sherlock Holmes was beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.