The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories and 4 Novels (Global Classics)

by Arthur Conan Doyle

When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most.

“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.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’

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

but there are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves,

when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

“Data! Data! Data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”

To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.”