The main thing with people of that sort is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do, they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.
Punishment has been slow in coming, but it has overtaken you at last.
I am inclined to think – ” said I. “I should do so,” Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently. I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I’ll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. “Really, Holmes,” said I severely, “you are a little trying at times.
Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life.
It is not what we know, but what we can prove.
She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.
Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,” said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. “It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret.
It is not easy to express the inexpressible,” he answered with a laugh.
What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done.
I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there’s no room for romance anywhere.
Wadley sent a message: ‘The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would do them the honor to come to their next meeting.’ The answer was unprintable.” “You don’t say?” “Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run: ‘Professor Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute, and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.
I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked will still wander free, then alas for the world!” Alleyne.
Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.” This was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him?
Give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and i am in my own proper atmosphere. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it.
THE POWER OF detaching his mind at will.
It is just all the difference between happiness and misery,” said Challenger with an abstracted face, still patting his wife’s hand. “You can swim with the tide and have peace in mind and soul, or you can thrust against it and be bruised and weary. This business is beyond us, so let us accept it as it stands and say no more.