Arthur Conan Doyle

Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.

"There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of handling patients," he remarked, seating himself on the table and swinging his legs. "The most obvious is that you must never let them see that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well to heel."

You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!" It was worth a wound -- it was worth many wounds -- to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.

But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.

I think that I had better go, Holmes." "Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.

As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. - Watson.

I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake. - Watson

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.

The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.

Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

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.

There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

You know my methods. Apply them.

I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

‎A change of work is the best rest.

I have taken to living by my wits.