Explore Quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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.

Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.

There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense. -Dr. Watson, The Sign of the Four

I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.

There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.

You have been in Afghanistan I perceive.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.

...it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away... from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.

There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.

Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.

Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.

It is all in the way of professional experience.

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.