Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.

My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.

For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.

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.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

My dear Watson, said [Sherlock Holmes], I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.