Top 100 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
#1. Streams may spring from one source and yet some may be clear and some be foul.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#2. Oh! A mystery is it?' I cried, rubbing my hands. 'This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. "The proper study of mankind is man" you know
Arthur Conan Doyle
#3. How are you, Watson?" said he, cordially. "I should never have known you under that moustache,
Arthur Conan Doyle
#4. Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#5. It is a tangled skein, you understand, and I am looking for a loose end.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#6. There are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#9. The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#11. The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#13. Commonplace," said Holmes, though I thought from his expression that he was pleased at my evident surprise and admiration.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#17. Perchance you shall, fair sir," said Nigel, "for all that I have seen of you fills me with this desire to go further with you. It is in my mind that we might turn this thing to profit and to honour, for when Sir Robert has spoken to you, I am free to do with you as I will.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#18. Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#19. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#20. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaol-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#21. The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#22. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild and menacing.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#23. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#24. Use your powers! Go to the scene of the crime! See the people concerned! Leave no stone unturned! In all your career you have never had so great a chance of serving your country.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#25. THREE DAYS LATER A MESSAGE WAS LEFT UNDER A PEBBLE UPON THE SUNDIAL." "'If it really annoys you, Hilton, we might go and travel, you and I, and so avoid this nuisance.' "'What, be driven out of our own house by a practical joker?
Arthur Conan Doyle
#27. I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#28. To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#29. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#31. The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#32. As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet,
Arthur Conan Doyle
#34. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#36. Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#37. It would be a rare place for a gallop." "You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?
Arthur Conan Doyle
#38. "I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur."
Arthur Conan Doyle
#39. Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. ( ... )
Arthur Conan Doyle
#40. The conduct of the criminal investigation has been left in the experienced hands of Inspector Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, who is following up the clues with his accustomed energy and sagacity.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#41. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the theory of reincarnation.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#42. As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#44. I reached this one, said my friend, by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker-street we shall just be in time for breakfast.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#45. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#46. It's true that you set us on the right track; but you'll own now that it was more by good luck than good guidance.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#48. One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell. Picture to yourself the unilateral development - the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!
Arthur Conan Doyle
#49. 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
Arthur Conan Doyle
#54. That hurts my pride, Watson. It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now..."
-Sherlock Holmes-
-The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Five Orange Pips-
Arthur Conan Doyle
#55. I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#57. The truly inspired priest is the man or woman with the big brain. It
Arthur Conan Doyle
#59. What have you to confess now? It's just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#60. Come at once if convenient- if inconvenient come all the same.
- S. H.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#61. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure- these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#62. My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#63. My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#64. The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#65. Summerlee burst into derisive laughter. 'A ptero-fiddlestick!' said he. 'It was a stork, if I ever I saw one.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#66. For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#67. Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#69. Every fresh advance which we make only reveals a fresh ridge beyond. And yet we have surely made some appreciable progress.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#70. It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#74. Give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and i am in my own proper atmosphere. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#75. Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#77. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#78. Things are always easier when imagination ceases and action begins
Arthur Conan Doyle
#79. It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through
a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#80. The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#82. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#83. 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
#85. His eyes kindled and a slight flush sprang into his thin cheeks. For an instant the veil had lifted upon his keen, intense nature, but for an instant only. When I glanced again his face had resumed that red-Indian composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#87. 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
#88. Watson: "You may be right."
Holmes: "The probability lies in that direction.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#89. Knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius, and
Arthur Conan Doyle
#91. There lies the image of our past and of our future," cried Alleyne, as they rode on upon their way. "Now, which is better, to till God's earth, to have happy faces round one's knee, and to love and be loved, or to sit forever moaning over one's own soul, like a mother over a sick babe?" "I
Arthur Conan Doyle
#93. It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact.
~ Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
#94. The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#95. When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#96. ... but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#99. Punishment has been slow in coming, but it has overtaken you at last.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#100. Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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