Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

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.

Crime is common. Logic is rare.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

It is really a very bad habit of yours to ask questions when you know perfectly well I don’t answer them.

There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.

The man who sees quite clearly what lies before him does best.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit. Destructive to the logical faculty.

It is always awkward doing business with an alias.

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

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.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn.

Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes part 2

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson.

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

Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.

There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

It is always a treat to come across a case where the solution does not lie upon the surface.

There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.

We were as gods, and lived with gods, and now cannot bear to be mere men.

One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

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

There’s nothing so important as trifles.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

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.

Stain upon stain, and shame upon shame.

The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when Holmes chose to devote his formidable talents to the solution of crime.

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 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.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.

That’s the difficulty of it. It’s so long ago. No one talked then of end-plates and angular force. It has all become mechanical since then. You see a bicycle in a drawing-room. Is it a commonplace notion that the drawing-room is the place for the bicycle?

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

The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

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

I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a bootlace.

It is the unreality of those footfalls which impresses me.

Let me recommend this book—one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man.

Is it really possible that you did not ascertain that the proclamation was a hoax?

The adventures of the last few days have taught me to think little of the world’s opinion and to set no value upon wealth or position.

I shall go down to Hampshire quite easy in my mind now. I shall write to Mr. Rucastle at once, sacrifice my poor hair to-night, and start for Winchester to-morrow.