A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes, #1)

by Arthur Conan Doyle

I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects.

He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.”

Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.

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.”

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

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