Quote collection
426 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?” “If I can be of use.” “Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one."
"There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words."
"There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!"
"Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either."
"Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation."
"The future was with Fate. The present was our own."
"The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless."
"So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it."
"It is more than possible; it is probable."
"Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?"
"Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."
"When such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair."
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment."
"Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable."
"A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog."
"All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience."
"...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 come within sight of him, that he breaks away... from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards."
"As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be."
"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 equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets."
"It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all."