Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like...

What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is...

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...

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

Well, and there is the end of our little drama,” I remarked, after we had sat some time smoking in silence. “I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have...

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.

How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It...

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

Meu caro amigo (…), a vida é infinitamente mais estranha que qualquer coisa que a mente do homem possa inventar. Não nos atreveríamos a conceber coisas que são, afinal, lugares-comuns da existência. Se pudéssemos sair...

Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.

I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley’s No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a...

…So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Busybody Holmes.

I assure you, my good Lestrade, that I have an excellent reason for everything that I do.

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

Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You...

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.” ~ Sherlock Holmes

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

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...

My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!

No ghosts need apply. – Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he...

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...

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

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.

Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

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

You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.” My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered...

So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson...

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

I don’t take much stock of detectives in novels – chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them. That’s just inspiration: not business.

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.

I must apologize for calling so late,” said he, “and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.

My business is that of every other good citizen – to uphold the law.

I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn’t we use...

…it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may...

My dear Watson,” said [Sherlock Holmes], “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is...

She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.

Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you...

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

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

To begin at the beginning.

When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.

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

. . . and meanwhile take my assurance that the clouds are lifting and that I have every hope that the light of truth is breaking through

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

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.~ The Poison Belt

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

It’s quite exciting,” said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.

Watson: “You may be right.”Holmes: “The probability lies in that direction.

As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to...