Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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?

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is easy to be wise after the event.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this.I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea.The board-schools.Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I think that I had better go, Holmes.Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there, And warmly debated the matter; The Orthodox said that it came from the air, And the Heretics said from the platter. They argued it long and they argued it strong, And I hear they are arguing now; But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese, Not one of them thought of a cow.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake.- Watson

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Well, Watson, what do you make of it?'Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.''I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me', said he.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle