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

“Yes, there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe: 'Schade, daß die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf; Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.'”

“A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.”

“The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.”

“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.”

“Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,' said he [Holmes], 'but it is a common lot this morning. Mrs Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.”

“What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”