Arthur Conan Doyle

“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.”

“To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”

“We can but try.”

“When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.”

“Streams may spring from one source and yet some may be clear and some be foul.”

“Kalau kausingkirkan semua yang mustahil, apa pun yang tersisa, betapapun mustahilnya, adalah kebenaran.”

“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.”

“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.”

“If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.”

“You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?""No, indeed!""You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged.""My dear fellow! I congrat-""To Milverton's housemaid.""My dear Holmes!""I wanted information, Watson.”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different”

“Omne ignotum pro magnifico.”

“Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.”

“I suppose I shall have to compound a felony, as usual.”

“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.”

“I consider that a man's brain originally is 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 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. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. 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.”

“To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.”

“There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?”

“He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.”

“There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.”

“When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.”

“It is only when you touch the higher that you realize how low we may be among the possibilities of creation.”

“Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.”

“I wanted to end the world, but I'll settle for ending yours.”

“The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.”

“Anything is better than stagnation.”

“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.”

“There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.”

“...There are in me the makings of a very fine loafer...”

“The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.”

“Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.”

“When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.”

“Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.”

“I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

“Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.”

“I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley's No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need.”

“What a lovely thing a rose is!"He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as 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 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.”

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' 'The dog did nothing in the night-time.''That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.”

“You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.”

“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

“Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.”

“Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

“He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. but I did - some little distance off, but fresh and clear""Footprints?"

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”