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?
'It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the moral obligation to notify someone of potential harm they may face due to the law's application.
This quote reflects on the tension between justice and ethical responsibility. The Inspector's assertion underscores the idea that the law, while it serves to protect society, can also be weaponized against individuals. In this context, the interplay of duty and fairness is illuminated, revealing the complexity of morality within legal frameworks. It encourages a critical examination of how laws can influence personal accountability and the unintended consequences of their enforcement.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a legal seminar about moral responsibilities in law enforcement.
More from Arthur Conan Doyle
All quotes βI had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.
You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.
It seems very strange ... that in the course of the world's history so obvious an improvement should never have been adopted. ... The next generation of Britishers would be the better for having had this extra hour of daylight in their childhood.
Similar quotes
Everybody since the '60s has been saying the nation is a fiction - the nation is an imaginary unity - but people didn't connect the dots and say all human endeavours sprang from the same principle.
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape
As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.
A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact β the fact β that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.
I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.