The Complete Sherlock Holmes Quotes

“You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.

- The Adventure of the Dying Detective”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“if i could be assured of your destruction, i would in the interest of the public, cheerfully accept my death.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“...Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer- excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained observer to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“It is easy to be wise after the event.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the truth?”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection

“You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“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.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

“His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. "You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it." "To forget it!" "You see," he explained, "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 a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. 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." "But the Solar System!" I protested. "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.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection

“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 a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“My line of thoughts about dogs is analogous. A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Who are you, then?” “My name is Sherlock Holmes.” “Good Lord!” “You have heard of me, I see.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other.  I have marvelled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection.  So we stood hand in hand, like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us .”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“My brain has always governed my heart" Sherlock Holmes”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes