"What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts."
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Quote collection
Arthur Conan Doyle quotes (page 17 of 22)
426 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A change of work is the best rest."
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"I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance."
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"You know my methods. Apply them."
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"Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else."
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"We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands."
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"I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather."
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"It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles."
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"Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience."
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"The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children."
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"If the man who observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each swinging clear of the other's orbit-if, I say, the man who sees this cannot realise the Creator's attributes without the help of the book of Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding."
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"I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for"
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"Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her."
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"Anything is better than stagnation."
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"Amberley excelled at chess - a mark, Watson, of a scheming mind."
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"But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things."
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"The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated."
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"A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood."
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"The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime."
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"If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination."
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