Libraries made me – as a reader, as a writer, and as a human being.
The response to a festering sore was not to extol its virtues, but to lance the thing and let the poison bleed out.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that my feelings towards the little man were distinctly maternal. Good God, I thought, how utterly revolting, and I turned my mind firmly to the problem at hand.
You think the knife was used, cleaned, then scraped through the blood on the floor?” Lestrade asked. “Evidently.” “Why do that?” “Chief Inspector, I try to form my hypotheses upon data, rather than shape the data to match my wishes.” And.
Madam, there is no treachery in the truth. There may be pain, but to face honestly all possible conclusions formed by a set of facts is the noblest route possible for a human being.” Holmes could be surprisingly empathetic at times, and his words now had a gentling effect on the lady.
I have never found ‘luck’ a dependable companion.
Why was the mind said to have an eye and not a hand, or a tongue? Perhaps touch, taste, odour, sound were linked to the heart rather than the intellect.
No doubt after the emperor was overthrown in 1911, your gardener would have joined the rest of the world in cutting the queue and taking on the laws and customs of his adoptive land. Before that, his assuming Western dress would have been dangerous for his family in China.
Light had dawned in the utter darkness.
Would you rather have it outside? Now the heat’s broken, coffee in the sun isn’t a repulsive idea.” “What a romantic offer: something not actively repulsive.
Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.
I think not. I find short hair too much fuss, always needing combing and cutting. Long hair is much easier, oddly enough.” There.
Everyone is allowed a weakness, even women of the twentieth century.
I mean really: If even Conan Doyle hungered to shove Holmes off a tall cliff, surely a young female of obvious intelligence would have brained the detective on first sight.
This threatens to become a circular argument,” Holmes said. “I know it’s there because it’s all that explains the facts. My wife tells me that astronomers posit the existence of an invisible planet by the effects it has on the orbit of other celestial bodies. Thus do I posit the existence of this object.
The night air moved up towards the Downs, washing over sea and orchard. I breathed it in, and thought that henceforth, loneliness would smell to me like fermenting apples.
Men do not change their names with marriage, and it had always struck me as odd that women were expected to do so. Perhaps.
I find folk wisdom to be a somewhat overrated commodity,” Holmes retorted. “It generally fails to take into account the workings of cause and effect.
If Mrs. Elliott chose to work off her upset by indulging in an orgy of baking, it was fine with me.
In reflecting back the respect others had for the name and the title, this child had already begun to take into himself those qualities which justified the respect.
If one plays on fear, takes away any remotely complicated ideas, and offers people a sense of confidence and right, one’s followers will beat to death any enemy they are pointed at.