“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.”

“Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”

“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”

“It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would youcare to try it?""No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not gotover the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extrastrain upon it."He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," hesaid. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I findit, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to themind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.”

“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.”

“It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”

“The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have doneall the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones getsthe credit, pray what remains for you?""For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains thecocaine-bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up forit.”