Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes & Sayings

The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. — Arthur Conan Doyle

From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views.
- Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic — Arthur Conan Doyle

My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? — Arthur Conan Doyle

'Men die of the diseases which they have studied most,' remarked the surgeon, snipping off the end of a cigar with all his professional neatness and finish. 'It's as if the morbid condition was an evil creature which, when it found itself closely hunted, flew at the throat of its pursuer. If you worry the microbes too much they may worry you. I've seen cases of it, and not necessarily in microbic diseases either. There was, of course, the well-known instance of Liston and the aneurism; and a dozen others that I could mention.' — Arthur Conan Doyle

I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom."
"Excellent!" I cried.
"Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I wanted to end the world, but I'll settle for ending yours. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes In — Arthur Conan Doyle

When such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair. High and strong the chateaux, lowly and weak the brushwood hut; but God help the seigneur and his lady when the men of the brushwood set their hands to the work of revenge! Through — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is just all the difference between happiness and misery," said Challenger with an abstracted face, still patting his wife's hand. "You can swim with the tide and have peace in mind and soul, or you can thrust against it and be bruised and weary. This business is beyond us, so let us accept it as it stands and say no more. — Arthur Conan Doyle

My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Well, and there is the end of our little drama," I remarked, after we had sat some time smoking in silence. "I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective."
He gave a most dismal groan. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is hardly fair to blame America for the state of San Francisco, for its population is cosmopolitan and its seaport attracts the floating vice of the Pacific; but be the cause what it may, there is much room for spiritual betterment. — Arthur Conan Doyle

So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Busybody Holmes. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance — Arthur Conan Doyle

The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home. — Arthur Conan Doyle

There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Let us see if there is justice upon
the earth, or if we are ruled by chance — Arthur Conan Doyle

The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week."
"Strange," said I, "how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigor. — Arthur Conan Doyle

There is nothing like first-hand evidence. — Arthur Conan Doyle

He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri", the little girl continued. "I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It's not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Well, Watson, what do you make of it?'
Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.
'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.'
'I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me', said he. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I'm well, but those are the principal ones at present. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The true scientific mind is not to be tied down by its own conditions of time and space. It builds itself an observatory erected upon the border line of present, which separates the infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its sallies even to the beginning and to the end of all things. As — Arthur Conan Doyle

I consider that a man's brain is originally like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge that might be useful to him gets crowded out. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime. — Arthur Conan Doyle

A fool takes in everything he comes across, so that there is no room for anything useful to find a place, — Arthur Conan Doyle

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND — Arthur Conan Doyle

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. — Arthur Conan Doyle

"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." — Arthur Conan Doyle

But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man I mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I've never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them, and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a gale of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted on starting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have envied her! That's what I should like to be, - envied for my man. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I spent the night in town, for I came up yesterday — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war. — Arthur Conan Doyle

THE GREEK INTERPRETER — Arthur Conan Doyle

Anything else?" "He was a man of untidy habits - very untidy and careless. He was left with — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes, you have an answer to everything — Arthur Conan Doyle

By all means."
"The first three sensible words that you have uttered since you entered this room, Watson — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Anything is better than stagnation. — Arthur Conan Doyle

A sick man is but a child, and so I will treat you. — Arthur Conan Doyle

No data yet," he answered. "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment. — Arthur Conan Doyle

A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. — Arthur Conan Doyle

... but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it.
I'm afraid that all the queen's horses and all the queen's men cannot avail in this matter. — Arthur Conan Doyle

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music of St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down. — Arthur Conan Doyle

But what will not be forgotten, and what will and should continue to obsess our imaginations, is this revelation of the possibilities of the universe, this destruction of our ignorant self-complacency, and this demonstration of how narrow is the path of our material existence and what abysses may lie upon either side of it. Solemnity and humility are at the base of all our emotions to-day. May they be the foundations upon which a more earnest and reverent race may build a more worthy temple. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business — Arthur Conan Doyle

They were of much the same stock, and their creeds could only be distinguished by their varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Every fresh advance which we make only reveals a fresh ridge beyond. And yet we have surely made some appreciable progress. — Arthur Conan Doyle

He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy - those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences. Sherlock Holmes, The Problem of Thor Bridge — Arthur Conan Doyle

That hurts my pride, Watson. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star. — Arthur Conan Doyle

That was it, sir. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Mr. Sherlock Holmes ... was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a tangled skein, you understand, and I am looking for a loose end. — Arthur Conan Doyle

He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody. — Arthur Conan Doyle

my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines. Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships — Arthur Conan Doyle

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ — Arthur Conan Doyle

Is that Eduardo Lucas of Godolphin Street?" "Yes." "You will not see him." "Why not?" "He was murdered in his house last night." My friend has so often astonished me in the course of our adventures that it was with a sense of exultation that I realized how completely I had astonished him. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles. — Arthur Conan Doyle

There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words. — Arthur Conan Doyle

if a man wants friends be must go among strangers. It's — Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like a vice upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh and put his lips to my ear.

"It is a nice household," he murmured. "That is the baboon. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you
care to try it?"
"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got
over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra
strain upon it."
He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he
said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find
it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the
mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Horses: dangerous on both ends and crafty in the middle — Arthur Conan Doyle

But our good humour was restored when we saw Lord John Roxton waiting for us upon the platform, his tall, thin figure clad in a yellow tweed shooting-suit. His keen face, with those unforgettable eyes, so fierce and yet so humorous, flushed with pleasure at the sight of us. His ruddy hair was shot with grey, and the furrows upon his brow had been cut a little deeper by Time's chisel, but in all else he was the Lord John who had been our good comrade in the past. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes. "Why, it might be a description of Watson!" "It's true," said the inspector, with amusement. "It might be a description of Watson." "Well, I'm afraid I can't help you, Lestrade," said Holmes. "The fact is that I knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous men in London, and that I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge. No, it's no use arguing. I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals rather than with the victim, and I will not handle this case." Holmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who — Arthur Conan Doyle

If she were seventeen at the time of her father's disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now
a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. — Arthur Conan Doyle

When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank. — Arthur Conan Doyle

This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

The public, not unnaturally, goes upon the principle that he who would heal others must himself be whole. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist out of stories. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You're too late. She's my wife."
"No, she's your widow."
His revolver cracked, and I saw the blood spurt from the front of Woodley's waistcoat. He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back, his hideous red face turning suddenly to a dreadful mottled pallor. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The sight of the fair young girl, as frank and wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. — Arthur Conan Doyle

What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson. — Arthur Conan Doyle