I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or
as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man
to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great
cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly
drained.
      -- Watson, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes -- it approaches to
cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the
latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply
out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To
do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness.
He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge."
      -- Stamford, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"How are you?" he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I
should hardly have given him credit. "You have been in Afghanistan, I
perceive."
      -- Sherlock Holmes's first words to Watson, in "A Study in Scarlet"

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature,
philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting
Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had
done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he
was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar
System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be
aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an
extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
      -- Watson, describing Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet"

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a
little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the
knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled
up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands
upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes
into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in
doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most
perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls
and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the
highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the
useful ones."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"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."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could infer the
possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or
the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever
we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction
and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study nor is
life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection
in it. Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which
present the greatest difficulties, let the enquirer begin by mastering more
elementary problems. Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to
distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he
belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of
observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for. By a man's
finger nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boot, by his trouser knees, by the
callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt cuffs
-- by each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united
should fail to enlighten the competent enquirer in any case is almost
inconceivable."
      -- From "The Book of Life", an article by Holmes quoted in "A Study
         in Scarlet"

"They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked
with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective
work."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of
life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of
it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"Oh, bless you, it doesn't matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will
be *on account* of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be *in spite* of
their exertions. It's heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they
will have followers. _'Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.'_"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no
new or special features from which deductions may be drawn."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri," the little
girl continued. "I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It's
not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees."
      -- Lucy Ferrier, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence," returned my
companion, bitterly. "The question is, what can you make people believe that
you have done."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

"In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason
backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but
people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more
useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are
fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had
opened. "It is cocaine," he said, -- "a seven-percent solution. Would you care
to try it?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"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."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson or
Lestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their depths -- which, by the way, is
their normal state -- the matter is laid before me."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the
same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with
romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story
or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail
bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from
walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.
      -- Watson, "The Sign of the Four"

"Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes, lightly. "He has
considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities
necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of
deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge; and that may come in time."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have been guilty of several
monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one
'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.' In it I
enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco,
with colored plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which
is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme
importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder
has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows
your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between
the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is
between a cabbage and a potato."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the
uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious
little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with
lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers,
and diamond-polishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to the
scientific detective, -- especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in
discovering the antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my hobby."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit, -- destructive to the logical
faculty."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to
live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal,
unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts
across the dun-colored houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and
material? What is the use of having powers, doctor, when one has no field upon
which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no
qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

He smiled gently. "It is of the first importance," he said, "not to allow your
judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, --
a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear
reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for
poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most
repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a
quarter of a million upon the London poor."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

I endeavored to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventures in
Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our situation
and so curious as to our destination that my stories were slightly involved. To
this day she declares that I told her one moving anecdote as to how a musket
looked into my tent at the dead of night, and how I fired a double-barrelled
tiger cub at it.
      -- Watson, in "The Sign of the Four"

"My health is somewhat fragile," he remarked, as he led the way down the
passage. "I am compelled to be a valetudinarian."
      -- Thaddeus Sholto, in "The Sign of the Four"

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible
whatever remains, *however improbable*, must be the truth?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

    "What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with
his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off
with the treasure. How's that?"
    "On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the
inside."
    "Hum! There's a flaw there."
      -- Athelney Jones and Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"He makes one curious but profound remark. It is that the chief proof of man's
real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. It argues, you see,
a power of comparison and of appreciation which is in itself a proof of
nobility. There is much food for thought in Richter."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"I would not tell them too much," said Holmes. "Women are never to be entirely
trusted, -- not the best of them."
      -- From "The Sign of the Four"

"Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose every one has some little immortal spark
concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at them. There is no a
priori probability about it. A strange enigma is man!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while
the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a
mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man
will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to.
Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

"Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met,
and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a
decided genius that way: witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan
from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and
whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above
all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

    "The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have done all the work
in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what
remains for you?"
    "For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine-bottle."
And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
      -- Watson and Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"

To Sherlock Holmes she is always *the* woman.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions,
and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably
balanced mind.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the
world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false
position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer.
They were admirable things for the observer -- excellent for drawing the veil
from men's motives and actions. But for the trained teasoner to admit such
intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to
introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental
results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own
high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a
nature such as his.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each
other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up
around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were
sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of
society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street,
buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine
and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen
nature.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into
an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear."
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

    "For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the
hall to this room."
    "Frequently."
    "How often?"
    "Well, some hundreds of times."
    "Then how many are there?"
    "How many? I don't know."
    "Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my
point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and
observed."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to
suit facts."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar
construction of the sentence -- 'This account of you we have from all quarters
received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German
who is so uncourteous to his verbs."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor," murmured Holmes without opening his
eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs
concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a subject or a
person on which he could not at once furnish information. In this case I found
her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a
staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner,
his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage
lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a
specialist in crime.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush
to the thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and
I have more than once taken advantage of it. In the case of the Darlington
substitution scandal it was of use to me, and also in the Arnsworth Castle
business. A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her
jewel-box."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Scandal in Bohemia"

    "What a woman -- oh, what a woman!" cried the King of Bohemia, when we had
all three read this epistle. "Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she
was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was
not on my level?"
    "From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very
different level to your Majesty," said Holmes coldly.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia,
and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He
used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it
of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her
photograph, it is always under the honorable title of the woman.
      -- From "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"You have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique things are very
often connected not with the larger but with the smaller crimes, and
occasionally, indeed, where there is room for doubt whether any positive crime
has been committed."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Red Headed League"

"I have nothing to do today. My practice is never very absorbing."
      -- Watson, in "The Red Headed League"

"As a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of events, I
am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to
my memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to
the best of my belief, unique."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Red Headed League"

"I begin to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I make a mistake in explaining.
'Omne ignotum pro magnifico,' you know, and my poor little reputation, such as
it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid."
      -- From "The Red Headed League"

"'You will, however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.'
With that he seized my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with
the pain. 'There is water in your eyes,' said he as he released me. 'I perceive
that all is as it should be. But we have to be careful, for we have twice been
deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler's wax
which would disgust you with human nature.'"
      -- Jabez Wilson, in "The Red Headed League"

"Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots and Archery
and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and hoped with diligence that I might
get on to the B's before very long. It cost me something in foolscap, and I had
pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings."
      -- Jabez Wilson, in "The Red Headed League"

"As far as you are personally concerned," remarked Holmes, "I do not see that
you have any grievance against this extraordinary league. On the contrary, you
are, as I understand, richer by some 30 pounds, to say nothing of the minute
knowledge which you have gained on every subject which comes under the letter
A."
      -- From "The Red Headed League"

"As a rule," said Holmes, "the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it
proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really
puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify."
      -- From "The Red Headed League"

    "What are you going to do, then?" I asked.
    "To smoke," he answered. "It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that
you won't speak to me for fifty minutes."
      -- From "The Red Headed League"

"I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is
rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want
to introspect."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Red Headed League"

    "Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red
Headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you
might see him."
    "Not him."
    "What then?"
    "The knees of his trousers."
      -- Watson and Holmes, in "The Red Headed League"

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable
perfomer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the
stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin
fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid,
dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound, Holmes the
relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to
conceive.
      -- From "The Red Headed League"

In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his
extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the
reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally
predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to
devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as
when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his
improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the
chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power
would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with
his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that
of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at
St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he
had set himself to hunt down.
      -- From "The Red Headed League"

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always oppressed
with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes.
      -- Watson, in "The Red Headed League"

"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir," said the police
agent loftily. "He has his own little methods, which are, if he won't mind my
saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic, but he has the makings
of a detective in him. It is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that
business of the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure, he has been more nearly
correct than the official force."
      -- Peter Jones, in "The Red Headed League"

"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. "It is
so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."
      -- Watson, in "The Red Headed League"

"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it
closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the
commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Red Headed League"

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in
his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which
the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which
are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window
hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in
at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the
plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through
generation, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction
with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and
unprofitable."
      -- From "A Case of Identity"

"We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet
the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic."
      -- Watson, in "A Case of Identity"

"Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Case of Identity"

"The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct
complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal
by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Case of Identity"

"It was most suggestive," said Holmes. "It has long been an axiom of mine that
the little things are infinitely the most important."
      -- From "A Case of Identity"

"The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Case of Identity"

"'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done
very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but
you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for color. Never trust
to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Case of Identity"

    A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent cleanly
smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the chemical
work which was so dear to him.
    "Well, have you solved it?" I asked as I entered.
    "Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta."
      -- From "A Case of Identity"

"If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian
saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for
whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in Hafiz as in
Horace, and as much knowledge of the world."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "A Case of Identity"

"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing," answered Holmes thoughtfully.
"It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own
point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising
manner to something entirely different."
      -- From "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact," he answered, laughing.
"Besides, we may chance to hit upon some other obvious facts which may have
been by no means obvious to Mr. Lestrade. You know me too well to think that I
am boasting when I say that I shall either confirm or destroy his theory by
means which he is quite incapable of employing, or even of understanding."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

"You know my method. It is founded upon the observance of trifles."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

"And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and not another word shall I say of this
case until we are on the scene of action."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

    "And the murderer?"
    "Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears thick-soled
shooting-boots and a gray cloak, smokes Indian cigars, uses a cigar-holder, and
carries a blunt pen-knife in his pocket. There are several other indications,
but these may be enough to aid us in our search."
      -- Lestrade and Holmes, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

"I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little
monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette
tobacco."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

"God help us!" said Holmes after a long silence. "Why does fate play such
tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do
not think of Baxter's words, and say, 'There, but for the grace of God, goes
Sherlock Holmes.'"
      -- From "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so
that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise
our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognize the
presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the
bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage.
      -- From "The Five Orange Pips"

    "I have come for advice."
    "That is easily got."
    "And help."
    "That is not always so easy."
      -- John Openshaw and Holmes, in "The Five Orange Pips"

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his
chair, with his finger-tips together. "The ideal reasoner," he remarked,
"would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce
from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the
results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole
animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has
thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to
accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet
grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be
solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by
the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is
necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilize all the facts which have
come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a
possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and
encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible,
however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful
to him in his work, and this I have endeavored in my case to do."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Five Orange Pips"

"Well," he said, "I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little
brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the
rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if
he wants it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Five Orange Pips"

"No, no. No crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "Only one of those
whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human
beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the
action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination
of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be
presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have
already had experience of such."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

"The question for us now to solve is the sequence of events leading from a
rifled jewel-case at one end to the crop of a goose in Tottenham Court Road at
the other."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it against
the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles.
Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the
devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a
bloody deed."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

    "You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?"
    "My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people
don't know."
      -- James Ryder and Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

"Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its
solution is its own reward."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the
last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many
tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for,
working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of
wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not
tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

"It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the
worst of all."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he
has knowledge. Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

"Then it flashed through my mind that the pain of my death would depend very
much upon the position in which I met it. If I lay on my face the weight would
come upon my spine, and I shuddered to think of that dreadful snap. Easier the
other way, perhaps; and yet, had I the nerve to lie and look up at that deadly
black shadow wavering down upon me?"
      -- Victor Hatherley, in "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb"

    "Well," said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more
to London, "it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I
have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?"
    "Experience," said Holmes, laughing. "Indirectly it may be of value, you
know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being
excellent company for the remainder of your existence."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb"

I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to
rain, with high autumnal winds, and the Jezail bullet which I had brought back
in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull
persistence.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

"This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man
either to be bored or to lie."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

    "They have been identified as her clothes, and it seemed to me that if the
clothes were there the body would not be far off."
    "By the same brilliant reasoning, every man's body is to be found in the
neighborhood of his wardrobe."
      -- Lestrade and Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

"Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I'd have done my duty by
him. We can't command our love, but we can our actions."
      -- Hatty Doran, in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

"It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who
believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in
far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of
the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the
Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

"Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still
to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

"I think that we may safely say," returned Holmes, "that she is wherever Sir
George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that whatever her sins are,
they will soon receive a more than sufficient punishment."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet"

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing
aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its
least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be
derived."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the
tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace
his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood -- "you
have erred perhaps in attempting to put color and life into each of your
statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record
that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable
feature about the thing."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing --
a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the
logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what
should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who
could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care
about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to
my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for
recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from
boarding-schools."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

    "If you should find yourself in doubt or in danger--"
    "Danger! What danger do you foresee?"
    Holmes shook his head gravely. "It would cease to be a danger if we could
define it," said he.
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Violet Hunter, in "The Adventure of the Copper
         Beeches"

"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a
turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special
subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their
beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of
their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot
accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or
the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among
the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a
word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime
and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled
for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of
the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in,
year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us
for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It
is the five miles of country which makes the danger."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

    "What *can* be the matter, then? Can you suggest no explanation?"
    "I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the
facts as far as we know them. But which of these is correct can only be
determined by the fresh information which we shall no doubt find waiting for
us."
      -- Watson and Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"Mrs. Rucastle seemed to me to be colorless in mind as well as in feature. She
impressed me neither favorably nor the reverse. She was a nonentity."
      -- Violet Hunter, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

"My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light 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. This child's disposition
is abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty's sake, and whether he derives this
from his smiling father, as I should suspect, or from his mother, it bodes evil
for the poor girl who is in their power."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

As to Miss Violet Hunter, my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment,
manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre
of one of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at Walsall,
where I believe that she has met with considerable success.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

    "We are going well," said he, looking out the window and glancing at his
watch. "Our rate at present is fifty-three and a half miles an hour."
    "I have not observed the quarter-mile posts," said I.
    "Nor have I. But the telegraph posts upon this line are sixty yards apart,
and the calculation is a simple one."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "Silver Blaze"

"Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "Silver Blaze"

"It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather
for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "Silver Blaze"

"The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance
to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise,
conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact
-- of absolute undeniable fact -- from the embellishments of theorists and
reporters."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "Silver Blaze"

"See the value of imagination," said Holmes. "It is the one quality which
Gregory lacks. We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the
supposition, and find ourselves justified. Let us proceed."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "Silver Blaze"

    "At least you have his assurance that your horse will run," said I.
    "Yes, I have his assurance," said the Colonel, with a shrug of his
shoulders. "I should prefer to have the horse."
      -- Watson and Colonel Ross, in "Silver Blaze"

    "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
    "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
    "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
    "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
      -- Inspector Gregory and Holmes, in "Silver Blaze"

And this not so much for the sake of his reputations -- for, indeed, it was
when he was at his wits' end that his energy and his versatility were most
admirable -- but because where he failed it happened too often that no one else
succeeded, and that the tale was left forever without a conclusion.
      -- From "The Yellow Face"

Sherlock Holmes was a man who seldom took exercise for exercise's sake. Few men
were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the
finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen; but he looked upon aimless
bodily exertion as a waste of energy, and he seldom bestirred himself save when
there was some professional object to be served.
      -- From "The Yellow Face"

    "My dear Mr. Grant Munro--" began Holmes.
    Our visitor sprang from his char. "What!" he cried, "you know my mane?"
    "If you wish to preserve your incognito,' said Holmes, smiling, "I would
suggest that you cease to write your name upon the lining of your hat, or else
that you turn the crown towards the person whom you are addressing."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Grant Munro, in "The Yellow Face"

"Upon my word, Watson, there is something very attractive about that livid face
at the window, and I would not have missed the case for worlds."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Yellow Face"

"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Yellow Face"

"Watson," said he, "if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little
over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves,
kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Yellow Face"

The public not unnaturally goes on the principle that he who would heal others
must himself be whole, and looks askance at the curative powers of the man
whose own case is beyond the reach of his drugs.
      -- Watson, in "The Stock-Brocker's Clerk"

"I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain," said he. "Results
without causes are much more impressive."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Stock-Brocker's Clerk"

"I sent in my testimonial and application, but without the least hope of
getting it. Back came an answer by return, saying that if I would appear next
Monday I might take over my new duties at once, provided that my appearance was
satisfactory. No one knows how these things are worked. Some people say that
the manager just plunges his hand into the heap and takes the first that
comes."
      -- Hall Pycroft, in "The Stock-Brocker's Clerk"

"Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson. You see that even a villain and
murderer can inspire such affection that his brother turns to suicide when he
learns that his neck is forfeited."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Stock-Brocker's Clerk"

"I don't know how you manage this, Mr. Holmes, but it seems to me that all the
detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands."
      -- Trevor senior, in "The 'Gloria Scott'"

An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes
was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most
methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness
of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy
men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.
      -- From "The Musgrave Ritual"

The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural
Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical
man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars
in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his
unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of
his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.
      -- Watson, in "The Musgrave Ritual"

I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air
pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an arm-chair
with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the
opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that
neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.
      -- Watson, in "The Musgrave Ritual"

Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a
way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish
or in even less desirable places.
      -- From "The Musgrave Ritual"

"It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of ours," he answered. "But it
has at least the saving grace of antiquity to excuse it."
      -- Reginald Musgrave, in "The Musgrave Ritual"

"You know my methods in such cases, Watson. I put myself in the man's place
and, having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself
have proceeded under the same circumstances. In this case the matter was
simplified by Brunton's intelligence being quite first-rate, so that it was
unnecessary to make any allowance for the personal equation, as the astronomers
have dubbed it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Musgrave Ritual"

"It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to
recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital.
Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being
concentrated."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Reigate Squires"

    " Excellent!" I cried.
    "Elementary," said he.
      -- Watson and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man"

A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my
companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction
to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his
filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little
rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of Nature found no place
among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the
evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Resident Patient"

"But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my
grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood
is liable to take the strangest forms."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

"My dear Watson," said he, "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."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

"I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the
detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be
the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no
energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solution, and
would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

"There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from
misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not
averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the
convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains
the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take
the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is,
under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice
of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of
the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

Mr. Melas, however, still lived, and in less than an hour, with the aid of
ammonia and brandy I had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes, and of
knowing that my hand had drawn him back from that dark valley in which all
paths meet.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he,
leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact
science by the reasoner. 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. Its smell and its 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."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty"

    "You suspect some one?"
    "I suspect myself."
    "What!"
    "Of coming to conclusions too rapidly."
      -- Annie Harrison and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Naval
         Treaty"

    "Look at those big, isolated clumps of building rising up above the slates,
like brick islands in a lead-colored sea."
    "The board-schools."
    "Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of
bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wise, better England
of the future."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty"

Standing on the run between us, with his slight, tall figure, his sharp
features, thoughtful face, and curling hair prematurely tinged with gray, he
seemed to represent that not too common type, a nobleman who is in truth noble.
      -- The description of Lord Holdhurst, in "The Adventure of the Naval
         Treaty"

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in
which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock
Holmes was distinguished.
      -- Opening line of "The Final Problem"

    "You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?" said he.
    "Never."
    "Aye, there's the genius and the wonder of the thing!" he cried. "The man
pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a
pinnacle in the records of crime."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Final Problem"

"As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world
of London so well as I do. For years past I have continually been conscious of
some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever
stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again
and again in cases of the most varying sorts -- forgery cases, robberies,
murders -- I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its
action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally
consulted. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded
it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it
led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of
mathematical celebrity."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Final Problem"

"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil
and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a
philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits
motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand
radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little
himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized.
Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to
be rifled, a man to be removed -- the word is passed to the Professor, the
matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case
money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses
the agent is never caught -- never so much as suspected."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Final Problem"

"'You crossed my path on the 4th of January,' said he. 'On the 23d you
incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you;
at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the
close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual
persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty. The situation is
becoming an impossible one.'"
      -- Professor Moriarty, speaking to Sherlock Holmes in "The Final
         Problem"

    "'Danger is part of my trade,' I remarked."
    "'That is not danger,' said he. 'It is inevitable destruction. You stand in
the way not merely of an individual, but of a mighty organization, the full
extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize. You
must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot.'"
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, in "The Final Problem"

"Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough with a
bludgeon. I knocked him down, and the police have him in custody; but I can
tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will
ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my
knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out
problems upon a black-board ten miles away."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Final Problem"

"I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not lived wholly
in vain," he remarked. "If my record were closed to-night I could still survey
it with equanimity. The air of London is the sweeter for my presence. In over a
thousand cases I am not aware that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong
side. Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature
rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of
society is responsible."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Final Problem"

"I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to
give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own
abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a
conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable
power of stimulating it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, to Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the
stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or
ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes,
the specialist in crime? Come in!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so
dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would
you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A
cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament
to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I
confess that I covet your skull."
      -- Dr Mortimer, to Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the
         Baskervilles"

"To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of
caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers
of evil are exalted."
      -- Hugo Baskerville's document, read by Dr Mortimer in "The Hound of
         the Baskervilles"

"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"
      -- Dr Mortimer, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world," said he. "In a
modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself
would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

    "Caught cold, Watson?" said he.
    "No, it's this poisonous atmosphere."
    "I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it."
    "Thick! It is intolerable."
    "Open the window, then!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

    "Where do you think that I have been?"
    "A fixture also."
    "On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire."
    "In spirit?"
    "Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to
observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible
amount of tobacco."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion
of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I
could find my way about."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

    "Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand
in the affairs of men--"
    "Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation."
    "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a
concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a
box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a
Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there
could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of
the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime,
though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the _Leeds Mercury_
with the _Western Morning News_. But a _Times_ leader is entirely distinctive,
and these words could have been taken from nothing else."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no
other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.
      -- Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches
everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track.
      -- From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with
his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were
brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before
him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place.
      -- Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed
his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type
Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of
our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.
      -- Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"It is murder, Watson -- refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to
her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who
had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn
him.
      -- Watson, on the death of Selden in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night
he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A
pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!" He
burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture.
I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.
      -- From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

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.
      -- From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill
him.
      -- From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

The more _outré_ and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to
be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when
duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to
elucidate it.
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may
have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by
no means incompatible emotions.
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

"The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man
may do in the future is a hard question to answer."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

As I did so I struck against an elderly, deformed man, who had been behind me,
and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I
picked them up, I observed the title of one of them, _The Origin of Tree
Worship_, and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile, who,
either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"

"I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear
Moriarty's voice screaming at me out of the abyss."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"

"I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting
Lhassa, and spending some days with the head lama. You may have read of the
remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it
never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then
passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting
visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum the results of which I have communicated to
the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into
the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in
the south of France."
      -- Sherlock Holmes explains his three-year absence, in "The Adventure
         of the Empty House"

"I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety," said
he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in
his own creation.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Empty House"

    "That you, Lestrade?" said Holmes.
    "Yes, Mr. Holmes. I took the job myself. It's good to see you back in
London, sir."
    "I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one
year won't do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than
your usual -- that's to say, you handled it fairly well."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Lestrade, in "The Adventure of the Empty
         House"

"My collection of M's is a fine one," said he. "Moriarty himself is enough to
make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of
abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the
waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of to-night."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"

"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.
I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole
procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands
for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person
becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"

"Meanwhile, come what may, Colonel Moran will trouble us no more. The famous
air-gun of Von Herder will embellish the Scotland Yard Museum, and once again
Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting
little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"

"With that man in the field, one's morning paper presented infinite
possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest
indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was
there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul
spider which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless
outrage -- to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected
whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world, no capital in
Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed. But now --" He
shrugged his shoulders in humorous deprecation of the state of things which he
had himself done so much to produce.
      -- Sherlock Holmes, on Professor Moriarty, in "The Adventure of the
         Norwood Builder"

"You mentioned your name, as if I should recognize it, but I assure you that,
beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and
an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder"

"Arrest you!" said Holmes. "This is really most grati-- most interesting."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder"

"But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to
stop."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, on Jonas Oldacre, in "The Adventure of the
         Norwood Builder"

"These hieroglyphics have evidently a meaning. If it is a purely arbitrary one,
it may be impossible for us to solve it. If, on the other hand, it is
systematic, I have no doubt that we shall get to the bottom of it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

"I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the moment of
action to enter into long and complex explanations."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

"I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself the
author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyze one hundred
and sixty separate ciphers, but I confess that this is entirely new to me."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

"As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it
predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would
expect to find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message, four
were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

"What one man can invent another can discover."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

"I nearly fell into the error of supposing that you were typewriting. Of
course, it is obvious that it is music. You observe the spatulate finger-ends,
Watson, which is common to both professions? There is a spirituality about the
face, however" -- she gently turned it towards the light -- "which the
typewriter does not generate. This lady is a musician."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist"

    "Well," said I, "you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it
selfishness."
    "Maybe the two things go together."
      -- Watson and Bob Carruthers, in "The Adventure of the Solitary
         Cyclist"

In the whirl of our incessant activity, it has often been difficult for me, as
the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those
final details which the curious might expect. Each case has been the prelude to
another, and the crisis once over, the actors have passed for ever out of our
busy lives.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist"

His card, which seemed too small to carry the weight of his academic
distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself -- so
large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of
self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the door had
closed behind him, was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down
upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible
upon our bearskin hearth-rug.
      -- The entrance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., in "The
         Adventure of the Priory School"

"Now," said Holmes, when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, "having secured
the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Priory School"

So unworldly was he -- or so capricious -- that he frequently refused his help
to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies,
while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some
humble client whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which
appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity.
      -- Watson's description of Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of
         Black Peter"

"There, Watson, this infernal case had haunted me for ten days. I hereby banish
it completely from my presence."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Black Peter"

"There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before
breakfast."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Black Peter"

"If you could have looked into Allardyce's back shop, you would have seen a
dead pig swung from a hook in the ceiling, and a gentleman in his shirt sleeves
furiously stabbing at it with this weapon. I was that energetic person, and I
have satisfied myself that by no exertion of my strength can I transfix the pig
with a single blow. Perhaps you would care to try?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Black Peter"

    "They appear to be lists of Stock Exchange securities. I thought that
`J.H.N.' were the initials of a broker, and that `C.P.R.' may have been his
client."
    "Try Canadian Pacific Railway," said Holmes.
      -- Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Black Peter"

It was a long and melancholy vigil, and yet brought with it something of the
thrill which the hunter feels when he lies beside the water-pool, and waits for
the coming of the thirsty beast of prey. What savage creature was it which
might steal upon us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which
could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw, or would it
prove to be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak and unguarded?
      -- From "The Adventure of Black Peter"

"Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the
serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with
their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that's how Milverton
impresses me."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"

"I am aware that what you say is true about the lady's resources," said he. "At
the same time you must admit that the occasion of a lady's marriage is a very
suitable time for her friends and relatives to make some little effort upon her
behalf. They may hesitate as to an acceptable wedding present. Let me assure
them that this little bundle of letters would give more joy than all the
candelabra and butter-dishes in London."
      -- Charles Augustus Milverton, in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus
         Milverton"

"You know, Watson, I don't mind confessing to you that I have always had an
idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal. This is the chance of
my lifetime in that direction. See here!" He took a neat little leather case
out of a drawer, and opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments.
"This is a first-class, up-to-date burgling kit, with nickel-plated jemmy,
diamond-tipped glass-cutter, adaptable keys, and every modern improvement which
the march of civilization demands."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"

"You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family
was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the
butter upon a hot day."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"

    No. 131 was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable, and most
unromantic dwellings. As we drove up, we found the railings in front of the
house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes whistled.
    "By George! It's attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will hold the
London message-boy. There's a deed of violence indicated in that fellow's round
shoulders and outstretched neck."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"

In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel
London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally,
maritime London, till we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls,
where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"

"The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use
it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"

Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse,
we both broke at clapping, as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of
colour sprang to Holmes's pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master
dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that
for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love
for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature
which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being
moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"

"Well," said Lestrade, "I've seen you handle a good many cases, Mr. Holmes, but
I don't know that I ever knew a more workmanlike one than that. We're not
jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you
come down to-morrow, there's not a man, from the oldest inspector to the
youngest constable, who wouldn't be glad to shake you by the hand."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"

"By Jove! my dear fellow, it is nearly nine, and the landlady babbled of green
peas at seven-thirty."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Three Students"

As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red
leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account
of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British
barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this
period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin --
an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French
President and the Order of the Legion of Honour.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"

Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against
the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten
miles of man's handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature,
and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more
than the molehills that dot the fields.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"

    "It is indeed, Mr. Holmes. I've had a bustling afternoon, I promise you.
Did you see anything of the Yoxley case in the latest editions?"
    "I've seen nothing later than the fifteenth century to-day."
      -- Stanley Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the
         Golden Pince-Nez"

    Holmes rose. Taking the forms, he carried them over to the window and
carefully examined that which was uppermost.
    "It is a pity he did not write in pencil," said he, throwing them down
again with a shrug of disappointment. "As you have no doubt frequently
observed, Watson, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has
dissolved many a happy marriage."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter"

"He is big enough and old enough to look after himself, and if he is so foolish
as to lose himself, I entirely refuse to accept the responsibility of hunting
for him."
      -- Lord Mount-James, on his nephew, in "The Adventure of the Missing
         Three-Quarter"

"Come, Watson," said he, and we passed from that house of grief into the pale
sunlight of the winter day.
      -- Sherlock Holmes's words in the last paragraph of "The Adventure of
         the Missing Three-Quarter"

"Come, Watson, come!" he cried. "The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your
clothes and come!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"

"Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it
rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at
hand."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"

"We have not yet met our Waterloo, Watson, but this is our Marengo, for it
begins in defeat and ends in victory."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"

"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."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"

"And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at
Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose -- that
proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their
most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may
depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Second Stain"

    "I am inclined to think--" said I.
    "I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.
      -- Opening lines of "The Valley of Fear"

    "You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
    "The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as--"
    "My blushes, Watson!" Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.
    "I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public."
    "A touch! A distinct touch!" cried Holmes. "You are developing a certain
unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard
myself.
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Valley of Fear"

"But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the
law -- and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of
all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the
underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations --
that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from
criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those
very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with
your year's pension as a solatium for his wounded character."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

"Is he not the celebrated author of the Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which
ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there
was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, on Professor Moriarty, in "The Valley of Fear"

    "But what can he do?"
    "Hum! That's a large question. When you have one of the first brains of
Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are
infinite possibilities."
      -- Watson and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

    "The next sign is C2. What do you make of that, Watson?"
    "Chapter the second, no doubt."
    "Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page
be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds
us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been
really intolerable."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Valley of Fear"

"Let us consider the claims of Whitaker's Almanac. It is in common use. It has
the requisite number of pages. It is in double column. Though reserved in its
earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite garrulous towards
the end."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

"There, Watson! What do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If the
green-grocer had such a thing as a laurel wreath, I should send Billy round for
it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes
genius ...
      -- Watson, in "The Valley of Fear"

"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to
shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of
crime. Everything comes in circles -- even Professor Moriarty. ... The old
wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will
be again."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

    "Well, Holmes," I murmured, "have you found anything out?"
    He stood beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall, lean
figure inclined towards me. "I say, Watson," he whispered, "would you be afraid
to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an
idiot whose mind has lost its grip?"
    "Not in the least," I answered in astonishment.
    "Ah, that's lucky," he said, and not another word would he utter that
night.
      -- From "The Valley of Fear"

"Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession.
The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of
extraordinary interest."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

"The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder -- what can one make of
such a denouement? But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever
forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories -- are
these not the pride and the justification of our life's work?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

"A great brain and a huge organization have been turned to the extinction of
one man. It is crushing the nut with the triphammer -- an absurd extravagance
of energy -- but the nut is very effectually crushed all the same."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Valley of Fear"

    Barker beat his head with his clenched fist in his impotent anger. "Do not
tell me that we have to sit down under this? Do you say that no one can ever
get level with this king devil?"
    "No, I don't say that," said Holmes, and his eyes seemed to be looking far
into the future. "I don't say that he can't be beat. But you must give me time
-- you must give me time!"
    We all sat in silence for some minutes while those fateful eyes still
strained to pierce the veil.
      -- The final paragraphs of "The Valley of Fear"

The friends of Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive
and well, though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism. He has,
for many years, lived in a small farm upon the downs five miles from
Eastbourne, where his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture.
During this period of rest he has refused the most princely offers to take up
various cases, having determined that his retirement was a permanent one.
      -- From the preface to the collection _His Last Bow_.

"My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not
connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the
papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the
criminal world."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge"

"I'm bound to say that I make nothing of the note except that there was
something on hand, and that a woman, as usual, was at the bottom of it."
      -- Inspector Baynes, in "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge"

"Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself
insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge"

    "Well, well! What next?" said he. "Brother Mycroft is coming round."
    "Why not?" I asked.
    "Why not? It is as if you met a tram-car coming down a country lane.
Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes
Club, Whitehall -- that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he has been here.
What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-
         Partington Plans"

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.
      -- Sherlock Holmes, on his brother Mycroft, in "The Adventure of the
         Bruce-Partington Plans"

"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans"

A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this
cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked
all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked
in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a
menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable
dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot"

"I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such
an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot"

He took down the great book in which, day by day, he filed the agony columns of
the various London journals. "Dear me!" said he, turning over the pages, "what
a chorus of groans, cries, and bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular
happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to
a student of the unusual!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Red Circle"

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for
the last."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Red Circle"

"There is one correspondent who is a sure draw, Watson. That is the bank.
Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax"

"Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country.
Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement
among the criminal classes."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax"

To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down to the roots of
the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for a description of Dr.
Shlessinger's left ear.
      -- Watson, in "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax"

"And a singularly consistent investigation you have made, my dear Watson," said
he. "I cannot at the moment recall any possible blunder which you have
omitted."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax"

"Now we will take another line of reasoning. When you follow two separate
chains of thought, Watson, you will find some point of intersection which
should approximate to the truth."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax"

Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not
only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and
often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity
and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His
incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional
revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific
experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him
made him the very worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were
princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price
which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in
his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always
a chivalrous opponent.
      -- Watson, describing Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dying
         Detective"

"I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours
electricity into a non-conductor?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

"Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of
oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the
brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

"You and I, Watson, we have done our part. Shall the world, then, be overrun by
oysters? No, no; horrible!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

"My correspondence, however, is, as you know, a varied one, and I am somewhat
upon my guard against any packages which reach me."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

It was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August -- the most terrible
August in the history of the world.
      -- First sentence of "His Last Bow"

The secretary chuckled. "She might almost personify Britannia," said he, "with
her complete self-absorption and general air of comfortable somnolence."
      -- Baron Von Herling, in "His Last Bow"

"I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need
not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to
see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans
which I have furnished."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "His Last Bow"

    "But you, Holmes -- you have changed very little -- save for that horrible
goatee."
    "These are the sacrifices one makes for one's country, Watson," said
Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. "To-morrow it will be but a dreadful
memory."
      -- Watson and Holmes, in "His Last Bow"

"With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear
at Claridge's to-morrow as I was before this American stunt -- I beg your
pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled -- before
this American job came my way."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "His Last Bow"

"Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!" He
picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, _Practical
Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the
Queen_. "Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days
when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of
London."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "His Last Bow"

    "Well, you realize your position, you and your accomplice here. If I were
to shout for help as we pass through the village--"
    "My dear sir, if you did anything so foolish you would probably enlarge the
two limited titles of our village inns by giving us 'The Dangling Prussian' as
a signpost."
      -- Von Bork and Holmes, in "His Last Bow"

"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an
east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It
will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its
blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger
land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson,
for it's time that we were on our way. I have a check for five hundred pounds
which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if
he can."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in the final paragraph of "His Last Bow"

I fear that Mr. Sherlock Holmes may become like one of those popular tenors
who, having outlived their time, are still tempted to make repeated farewell
bows to their indulgent audiences. This must cease and he must go the way of
all flesh, material or imaginary. One likes to think that there is some
fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place
where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson,
where Scott's heroes still may strut, Dickens's delightful Cockneys still raise
a laugh, and Thackeray's worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible
careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his
Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some
even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.
      -- From the preface to the collection _The Casebook of Sherlock
         Holmes_.

    "But why not eat?"
    "Because the faculties become refined when you starve them. Why, surely, as
a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the
way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The
rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider."
      -- Watson and Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone"

"It is a small point, Count Sylvius, but perhaps you would kindly give me my
prefix when you address me. You can understand that, with my routine of work, I
should find myself on familiar terms with half the rogues' gallery, and you
will agree that exceptions are invidious."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone"

"No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!"
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone"

Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is
a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.
D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid.
      -- From "The Adventure of Thor Bridge"

Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping
back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.
No less remarkable is that of the cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring
morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was
anything further ever heard of herself and her crew. A third case worthy of
note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who
was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a
remarkable worm said to be unknown to science.
      -- From "The Adventure of Thor Bridge"

    "Well, if dollars make no difference to you, think of the reputation. If
you pull this off every paper in England and America will be booming you.
You'll be the talk of two continents."
    "Thank you, Mr. Gibson, I do not think that I am in need of booming."
      -- Neil Gibson and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Thor Bridge"

    "You've done yourself no good this morning, Mr. Holmes, for I have broken
stronger men than you. No man ever crossed me and was the better for it."
    "So many have said so, and yet here I am," said Holmes, smiling.
      -- Neil Gibson and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Thor Bridge"

Come at once if convenient -- if inconvenient come all the same.
      -- A note from Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Creeping
         Man"

The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of
habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an
institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the
index books, and others perhaps less excusable.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man"

He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be
made to me -- many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his
bedstead -- but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some
way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a
certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to
make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly
and swiftly.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man"

"A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family,
or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous
people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing
moods of others."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man"

"When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man"

"Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson," said Holmes in a
reminiscent voice. "It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of
Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"

"This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The
world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"

Holmes looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head. "I never get your limits,
Watson," said he. "There are unexplored possibilities about you."
      -- From "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"

It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his
reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties
of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge
for yourselves.
      -- Opening paragraph of "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs"

    "You say he was affable?"
    "A purring cat who thinks he sees prospective mice. Some people's
affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls."
      -- Watson and Holmes, discussing Baron Gruner, in "The Adventure of
         the Illustrious Client"

He swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under my friend's nose. Holmes examined
it closely with an air of great interest. "Were you born so?" he asked. "Or did
it come by degrees?" It may have been the icy coolness of my friend, or it may
have been the slight clatter which I made as I picked up the poker. In any
case, our visitor's manner became less flamboyant.
      -- From "The Adventure of the Three Gables"

"But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without
them."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Three Gables"

Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to
remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little inquiries
it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some
remarkable characteristics of his own to which in his modesty he has given
small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances. A
confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always
dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and
to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.
      -- Sherlock Holmes, writing in "The Adventure of the Blanched
         Soldier"

"I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier"

He seemed to live in some high abstract region of surds and conic sections,
with little to connect him with ordinary life.
      -- Sherlock Holmes, describing Ian Murdoch, in "The Adventure of the
         Lion's Mane"

    "You certainly do things thoroughly, Mr. Holmes."
    "I should hardly be what I am if I did not."
      -- Inspector Bardle and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the
         Lion's Mane"

"I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane"

"Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic and futile?
Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left
in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow -- misery."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"

"Amberley excelled at chess -- one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"

I deprecate, however, in the strongest way the attempts which have been made
lately to get at and to destroy these papers. The source of these outrages is
known, and if they are repeated I have Mr. Holmes's authority for saying that
the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained
cormorant will be given to the public. There is at least one reader who will
understand.
      -- Watson, in "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger"

    "Your life is not your own," he said. "Keep your hands off it."
    "What use is it to anyone?"
    "How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the most
precious of all lessons to an impatient world."
      -- Sherlock Holmes and Eugenia Ronder, in "The Adventure of the
         Veiled Lodger"

"These are deep waters, Mr. Mason; deep and rather dirty."
      -- Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place"

"You will not, I am sure, be offended if I say that any reputation for
sharpness which I may possess has been entirely gained by the admirable foil
which you have made for me. Have I not heard of debutantes who have insisted on
plainness in their chaperones?"
      -- Holmes, to Watson, in "The Field Bazaar"

"My small experience of cricket clubs has taught me that next to churches and
cavalry ensigns they are the most debt-laden things upon earth."
      -- Holmes, in "The Field Bazaar"

There are many who will still bear in mind the singular circumstances which,
under the heading of the Rugby Mystery, filled many columns of the daily Press
in the spring of the year 1892. Coming as it did at a period of exceptional
dulness, it attracted perhaps rather more attention than it deserved, but it
offered to the public that mixture of the whimsical and the tragic which is
most stimulating to the popular imagination.
      -- From "The Story of the Man with the Watches"

"I do not go so far as to say that the English are more honest than any other
nation, but I have found them more expensive to buy."
      -- Herbert de Lernac, in "The Story of the Lost Special"

"Our stoker did his business so clumsily that Slater in his struggles fell off
the engine, and though fortune was with us so far that he broke his neck in the
fall, still he remained as a blot upon that which would otherwise have been one
of those complete masterpieces which are only to be contemplated in silent
admiration. The criminal expert will find in John Slater the one flaw in all
our admirable combinations. A man who has had as many triumphs as I can afford
to be frank, and I therefore lay my finger upon John Slater, and I proclaim him
to be a flaw."
      -- Herbert de Lernac, in "The Story of the Lost Special"