Arthur Conan Doyle

You know how easily and suddenly these things happen, beginning in playful teasing and ending in something a little warmer than friendship. You squeeze the slender arm which is passed through yours, you venture to take the little gloved hand, you say good night at absurd length in the shadow of the door. It is innocent and very interesting, love trying his wings in a first little flutter.

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

if i could be assured of your destruction, i would in the interest of the public, cheerfully accept my death.

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he.

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

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.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

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