01c. 1894 ADPerhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
03c. 1894 ADI assure you, my good Lestrade, that I have an excellent reason for everything that I do.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
05c. 1894 ADHolmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
06c. 1894 ADThe stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
07c. 1894 ADThat hurts my pride, Watson. It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now..."-Sherlock Holmes--The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Five Orange Pips-Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
08c. 1894 ADHe 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 ↗
09c. 1894 ADThere are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
10c. 1894 ADI do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
12c. 1894 ADViolence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
13c. 1894 ADNo violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
15c. 1894 ADI would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
16c. 1894 ADTo underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
17c. 1894 ADSome believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our unending search, our abiding desire for immortality.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
18c. 1894 ADI trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
19c. 1894 ADAm 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 ↗
20c. 1894 ADHe was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer- excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained observer to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
21c. 1894 ADThe chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
22c. 1894 ADTruly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence?Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
23c. 1894 ADI have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man,Or the man who’s half a boy.Arthur Conan Doyle / quote ↗
24c. 1894 ADHe 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 ↗
