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Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes | Quotes said by Arthur Conan Doyle

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #1

    ...above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #2

    ...it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away... from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #3

    ...Recognising, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--
    Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first? Asked Holmes, with some asperity.
    To the man of precised, scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.
    Then had you not better consult him?
    I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--
    Just a little, said Holmes.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #4

    ?A change of work is the best rest.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #5

    [O]n general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #6

    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.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #7

    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.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #8

    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 Quote #9

    A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #10

    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 Quote #11

    Accounts are not quite settled between us, said she, with a passion that equaled my own. I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #12

    All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #13

    Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H. It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #14

    And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #15

    Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #16

    Anything is better than stagnation.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #17

    As a rule, 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.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #18

    But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color 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.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #19

    By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.'
    'I shall be delighted.'
    'You don't mind breaking the law?'
    'Not in the least.'
    'Nor running a chance of arrest?'
    'Not in a good cause.'
    'Oh, the cause is excellent!'
    'Then I am your man.'
    'I was sure that I might rely on you.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #20

    Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #21

    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.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #22

    Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #23

    Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.'
    That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked.
    One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #24

    Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:

    1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
    2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
    3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
    4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
    5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
    6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
    7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
    8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
    9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
    10. Plays the violin well.
    11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
    12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #25

    Exactly. Since it is morally justifiable, I have only to consider the question of personal risk. Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this, when a lady is in most desperate need of his help?

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #26

    For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #27

    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 Quote #28

    He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #29

    He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle Quote #30

    He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?'
    'No, I have not.'
    'Well, well, such is fame!

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