Quotes from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

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

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

“I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from 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?”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from 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, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

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

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

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

“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“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, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“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, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Let me say right here, Mr. Holmes, that money is nothing to me in this case. You can burn it if it’s any use in lighting you to the truth. This woman is innocent and this woman has to be cleared, and it’s up to you to do it. Name your figure!
My professional charges are upon a fixed scale, I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from 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, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

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

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

“You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?” “The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as– –” “My blushes, Watson!” Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice. “I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public.” “A touch! A distinct touch!” cried Holmes. “You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“I am inclined to think--” said I. “I should do so,” Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently. I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I’ll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. “Really, Holmes,” said I severely, “you are a little trying at times.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Complete Sherlock Holmes

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“How had she ended up like this, imprisoned in the role of harridan? Once upon a time, her brash manner had been a mere posture - a convenient and amusing way for an insecure teenage bride, newly arrived in America, to disguise her crippling shyness. People had actually enjoyed her vituperation back then, encouraged it and celebrated it. She had carved out a minor distinction for herself as a 'character': the cute little English girl with the chutzpah and the longshoreman's mouth. 'Get Audrey in here,' they used to cry whenever someone was being an ass. 'Audrey'll take him down a peg or two.'

But somewhere along the way, when she hadn't been paying attention, her temper had ceased to be a beguiling party at that could be switched on and off at will. It had begun to express authentic resentments: boredom with motherhood, fury at her husband's philandering, despair at the pettiness of her domestic fate. She hadn't noticed the change at first. Like an old lady who persists in wearing the Jungle Red lipstick of her glory days, she had gone on for a long time, fondly believing that the stratagems of her youth were just as appealing as they had ever been. By the time she woke up and discovered that people had taken to making faces at her behind her back - that she was no longer a sexy young woman with a charmingly short fuse but a middle-aged termagant - it was too late. Her anger had become a part of her. It was a knotted thicket in her gut, too dense to be cut down and too deeply entrenched in the loamy soil of her disappointments to be uprooted.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from The Believers

“I love eating chicken with my bare hands. It makes me want to snarl at people, even more than usual.”
― Jeri Smith-Ready, quote from Requiem for the Devil

“Welcome to the closet, I thought, is it dark in here or is just me”
― Josh Lanyon, quote from Fatal Shadows

“In my ears I have heard the words of Sitting Bull, telling me that white people are not to be trusted. But I have also heard the words of Black Kettle, who told us to reach out a hand of peace.”
― Kent Nerburn, quote from Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

“George was full of hatred. Of his own weakness and stupidity, of his magic, of the stubbornness and the pride of Beatrice and Marit, and, last of all, hatred of Dr. Gharn, who had started it all.
But the hatred swayed to pity. Then to hopelessness. Then back to anger.
Every once in a great while, he felt a moment of peace, usually when he caught a glimpse of Beatrice and Marit together.
He loved them both in different ways. But that could not be.
He turned away, and the cycle began again.”
― Mette Ivie Harrison, quote from The Princess and the Hound

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