The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind." "Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

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.

I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.

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.

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.

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.

To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.

It’s every man’s business to see justice done.

In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.

If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.

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.

I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial.

...to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old lovers are the worst.

we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis.

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.

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.

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.

These relics have a history then?' 'So much so that they are history.

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.

The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters.

for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person,

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.

Save for the occasional use of cocaine he had no vices,

...above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.