Quotes from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind."
"Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Homes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.R. done in bullet pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“It’s every man’s business to see justice done.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Watson," said he, "if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“...to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old lovers are the worst.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from flowers.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Save for the occasional use of cocaine he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“These relics have a history then?'
'So much so that they are history.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“The statesman received us with that old-fashioned courtesy for which he is remarkable, and seated us on the two luxuriant lounges on either side of the fireplace. Standing on the rug between us, with his slight, tall figure, his sharp features, thoughtful face, and curling hair prematurely tinged with gray, he seemed to represent that not too common type, a nobleman who is in truth noble.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person,”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Save for the occasional use of cocaine he had no vices,”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“...above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

About the author

Popular quotes

“There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.”
― William Gaddis, quote from The Recognitions

“Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones —
In fact, he's remarkably fat.
He doesn't haunt pubs — he has eight or nine clubs,
For he's the St. James's Street Cat!
He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers
Or such an impeccable back.
In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

“the last at last seen of him
himself unseen by him
and of himself”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Murphy

“Forty-five minutes and two-hundred wires later, Nate had transformed the spare bedroom upstairs into a video game haven. Scarlet listened to the three boys argue about the most efficient way to destroy an AWOL robot and realized she’d rather listen to Heather complain about last year’s footwear styles than one more minute of nerd-talk.

Nate pulled a few speakers from his bag.

“Surround sound, Nate? Really?” Gabriel pointed to the hall. “My bedroom is right next door. How am I supposed to sleep when you’re blasting aliens all night? Why couldn’t you just use the downstairs guest room?”

“First of all,” Nate adjusted a speaker and looked back at Gabriel, “the aliens are on my team—so I don’t ‘blast’ them. Second,” Nate’s eyes grew wide, “you know I have a wicked fear of sleeping underground. Basements are for bats and axe-murders.” He looked at Tristan. “No offense.”

Tristan shrugged.”
― Chelsea Fine, quote from Anew

“It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, quote from Palimpsest

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.