Who are you, then?” “My name is Sherlock Holmes.” “Good Lord!” “You have heard of me, I see.
I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial.
There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans.
It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
My mind rebels at stagnation.
To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson – all else will come.
But the Solar System!” I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
Patience, my friend, patience! You will find in time that it has everything to do with it.
He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval.
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.
The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man.
Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you.
Work is the best antidote to sorrow.
Look at you. Why is the only woman you ever cared about a world-class criminal – are you a masochist?
Nothing is little to a great mind.
It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime.
Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.
Suddenly the dreamer disappeared, and Holmes, the man of action, sprang from his chair.
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.