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"