The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Quotes

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“As a rule, 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, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“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.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1

“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. 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, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

~ The Poison Belt”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“It is more than possible; it is probable.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. (...)”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“I have taken to living by my wits.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Well," he said, "I say, now, as I said then, that 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 this library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“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.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“I think that I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but is is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“You know,' I answered, with some emotion, for I had never seen so much of Holmes' heart before, 'that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow