The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

“(Holmes to Watson: ‘Work is the best antidote to sorrow’),”
― Russell Miller, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography

“In ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ – Conan Doyle’s favourite Sherlock Holmes story – a ‘swamp adder … the deadliest snake in India’, trained by bowls of milk and recalled by a whistle, slithers down a bell pull, kills a sleeping woman and returns to its master by climbing up the bell pull and entering the adjoining room through a ventilator. There is no such reptile as a ‘swamp adder’, there are no adders in India, snakes do not like milk, are completely deaf, and no snake could climb a bell pull.”
― Russell Miller, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography

“You see,’ he tells Watson, ‘I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it … 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.”
― Russell Miller, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography

“As souvenirs he carried away a Boer carbine, a band triangle, a half-knitted sock made with needles fashioned from barbed wire and a set of leg fetters.”
― Russell Miller, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography