Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.

The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

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.

You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist out of stories.

Now, Watson,' said Holmes, (...) '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.' (...) 'You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,' said he. 'It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant.

The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes...was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night.

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 surely well for man that he came late in the order of creation. There were powers abroad in earlier days which no courage and no mechanism of his could have met. What could his sling, his throwing-stick, or his arrow avail him against such forces as have been loose tonight? Even with a modern rifle it would be all odds on the monster.

Look at you. Why is the only woman you ever cared about a world-class criminal - are you a masochist?

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.