The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes, #2)

by Arthur Conan Doyle

But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.”

Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?” “On the contrary,” he answered; “it would prevent me from taking a second dose of cocaine.

“No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty.

“You really are an automaton—a calculating machine,” I cried. “There is something positively inhuman in you at times.”

“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law, instead of exerting them in its defence.

It is that the chief proof of man’s real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant.

“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?” “For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.”