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“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.” “Frequently.” “How often?” “Well, some hundreds of times.” “Then how many are there?” “How many? I don’t know.” “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.
“I have no data yet. 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. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?”
Holmes without opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.
“You don’t mind breaking the law?” “Not in the least.” “Nor running a chance of arrest?” “Not in a good cause.”
It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. 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.
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.
My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.
“Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked. “‘L’homme c’est rien—l’oeuvre c’est tout,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to Georges Sand.”
“life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
They are important, you understand, without being interesting.
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
“’Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for colour.
All this is amusing, though rather elementary, but I must go back to business, Watson.
‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” he answered, laughing.
You know me too well to think that I am boasting when I say that I shall either confirm or destroy his theory by means which he is quite incapable of employing, or even of understanding.
“You are right,” said Holmes, demurely; “you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.”
“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.
“I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Crime is common. Logic is rare.
Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality.
