“...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.”
“Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels
“Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”
Source: The Sherlock Holmes Archives (incl. The Truth About Sherlock Holmes)
“It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.”
Source: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.”
Source: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuff — By each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.”
“You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.”
“His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels
“There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”
Source: The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased Edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books)
“Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details.”
Source: Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)
“I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.”
Source: The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Holmes #6
“For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.”
Source: The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes
“Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.”
Source: The Sherlock Holmes Archives (incl. The Truth About Sherlock Holmes)
“No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Sherlock Holmes
“It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“It is more than possible; it is probable.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Illustrated): All 4 Novels and 56 Stories with More Than 480 Illustrations
“The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection With illustrated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 4 Novels, 56 Short Stories and 120+ illustrations
“Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes. The best stories
“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?” “If I can be of use.” “Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes - The Ultimate Collection: 4 Novels, 56 Short Stories & 5 Extracanonical Works
“Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. (...)”
Source: Sherlock Holmes - The Short Stories (Book 2): The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Part 2), His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
“All right, Watson. Don’t look so scared,” he muttered in a very weak voice. “It’s not as bad as it seems.” “Thank God for that!” “I’m a bit of a single-stick expert, as you know. I took most of them on my guard. It was the second man that was too much for me.” “What can I do, Holmes? Of course, it was that damned fellow who set them on. I’ll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.” “Good old Watson!(...)”
Source: Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection With illustrated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 4 Novels, 56 Short Stories and 120+ illustrations
“It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this." I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself. "Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea." "The board-schools." "Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels
“I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.”
Source: Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)
“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”
Source: Sherlock Holmes - The Novels: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear
“I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection
“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels
“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.”
Source: The Return of Sherlock Holmes
“What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”
Source: His Last Bow and Others: Sherlock Holmes Collections
“horses: dangerous on both ends and crafty in the middle”
“Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.”
“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.”
Source: The Best of Sherlock Holmes: Literary Touchstone Classic
“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”
“There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.”
Source: Mysteries and Adventures
“It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“I love and am loved by a better man than he.”
Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Novels: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“I have taken to living by my wits.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection With illustrated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 4 Novels, 56 Short Stories and 120+ illustrations
“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”
“The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”
Source: The Sign of Four
“A change of work is the best rest.”
Source: The Sign of Four
“To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed, The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection With illustrated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 4 Novels, 56 Short Stories and 120+ illustrations
“...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.”
Source: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”
Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.”
“This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”
Source: The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
“I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection With illustrated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 4 Novels, 56 Short Stories and 120+ illustrations
“To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.”
