Sherlock Holmes Quotes

To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed, The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

On Westminster Bridge, Arthur was struck by the brightness of the streetlamps running across like a formation of stars. They shone white against the black coats of the marching gentlefold and fuller than the moon against the fractal spires of Westminster. They were, Arthur quickly realized, the new electric lights, which the city government was installing, avenue by avenue, square by square, in place of the dirty gas lamps that had lit London's public spaces for a century. These new electric ones were brighter. They were cheaper. They required less maintenance. And they shone farther into the dime evening, exposing every crack in the pavement, every plump turtle sheel of stone underfoot. So long to the faint chiaroscuro of London, to the ladies and gentlemen in black-on-black relief. So long to the era of mist and carbonized Newcastle coal, to the stench of the Blackfriars foundry. Welcome to the cleasing glare of the twentieth century.

~ Graham Moore

It's true, I'm impressed with myself, almost daily. If I don't impress myself then how am I ever to feel accomplished? Who cares if you impress others? Indeed. Others' opinions hardly matter, but one's own sense of accomplishment is paramount, is it not?

~ Ridley Pearson

She had very much looked forward to a word in private with him. But she forgot, as she usually did, the silence that always came between them in these latter years, whenever they found themselves alone.The queer sensation in her chest, however, was all too familiar, that mix of pleasure and pain, never one without the other.She could have done without those feelings. She would have happily gone her entire life never experiencing the pangs of longing and the futility of regret. He made her human—or as human as she was capable of being. And being human was possibly her least favorite aspect of life.

~ Sherry Thomas

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. It's smell and it's 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.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A wise man does not always admit to everything he knows. And sometimes an overly-credulous friend can be a source of mild amusement.”~Sherlock Holmes

~ Stephanie Osborn

Well, it is generally considered— though not always true— that the wife of a man so honoured is likely also to be worthy of the honour, and so it is accorded her. In the event it is false, and I have known that to be so in more than one circumstance , it is still accorded her in deference to her husband.~Sherlock Holmes, with respect to aristocratic titles

~ Stephanie Osborn

Watson fully comprehended the fact that occasionally it is useful for one’s adversaries to underestimate one’s abilities.”~Sherlock Holmes

~ Stephanie Osborn

I am looking forward to fully understanding what is occurring. Other than the fact that we are well over a century in my future—if it is MY future; in America, in an underground government facility of some sort near the Colorado Rocky Mountains, specifically Pikes Peak, so I assume the nearest city of any import to be Colorado Springs…I am afraid I have little grasp of your project.”~Sherlock Holmes

~ Stephanie Osborn

Suddenly the images in the center of the room became more than images. They solidified.

~ Stephanie Osborn

That’s our cue,” Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. “Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they’re apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn’t that fry your noggin?

~ Stephanie Osborn

For the first time in a very many years, he felt the old vexation, the mingled impatience and pleasure at the world's beautiful refusal to yield up its mysteries without a fight.

~ Michael Chabon

It's elementary, my dear Winifred.

~ Miss Mae

If man could apply half the ingenuity he’s exhibited in the creation of weapons to more sensible ends, there’s no limit to what he might yet accomplish

~ Mark Frost

It's a fallacy to believe that age in itself brings wisdom, but one thing it infallibly brings is experience.

~ Gillian Linscott

She leaned back, closing her eyes and blowing out a thin wisp of smoke. “He was always a good-looking man. Your eyes are from him, the same blue, but you are slimmer of build and have your grandmother’s exotic face rather than his rounder, friendly one. He was a bit of a bounder, as men of his looks are apt to be.”I grinned at this, adding to my mental picture.“He married as often as…” she blinked, laughed, “well, as often as I did, I suppose, though my reasons were infinitely better.

~ Angela Misri

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.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

we are two like-minded creatures too well-matched, both equal halves of a whole not altogether wholesome

~ Beatriz Fitzgerald Fernandez

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchw

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Perhaps 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

Why, of course, if the reader were smart enough, he could figure the whole thing through after just the first few pages! But in his heart Arthur knew that his readers didn't really want to win. They wanted to test their wits against the author at full pitch, and they wanted to lose. To be dazzled.

~ Graham Moore

Conan Doyle deluded a century of readers into thinking we're all deductive geniuses.

~ Rob Thomas

He 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

There 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

I 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

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The door opens and my new neighbor is a vampire. He’s nearly a foot taller than me. Unruly ink-black hair, and a face made of knife angles. If I were obnoxious, I might use the term shockingly attractive . Or terrifyingly handsome . Holy mother of balls would also be an option.

~ Eva Morgan

I am a practitioner of the science of deduction, of using the known facts in a case to unveil the unknown.’ - Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Murders

~ Mark Sohn

The figure in the cloak had turned, waving a fist in the air in a gesture of pure spite. ‘Damn you!’ My whispered curse came as I drew my revolver, pausing only to take aim. Two shots rang out, shattering the very air between us. I could not be sure if the heavy bullets had found their mark; the fiend whirling around behind a chimney-stack a moment after I fired. A groan from the blackness below-it was Holmes!. - John Watson, Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Murders

~ Mark Sohn

No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk.

~ Anthony Horowitz

Am 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

He 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

I am somewhat exhausted, I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle