"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."

"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."

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

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the situation."

"Before we begin to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental."

"The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive."

"The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest."

"She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time."

"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence, the question is what you can make people believe that you have done."

"Art in the blood is liable to take the strongest forms."

"Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep."

"Anything is better than stagnation."

"Who knows, Watson? Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male."

"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt."

"It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."

"What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

"It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it."

"I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial."

"I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall."

"Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other until that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marveled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I would go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us."

"It would be superfluous todrive us mad, my dear Watson."

"My job is to know what other people do not know."

"I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question."

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty."

"She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good."

"Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."

"I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety."

"The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

"The country inspector's face had shown his intense amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes' investigation. At first he had shown some disposition to assert his own position, but now he was overcome with admiration, and ready to follow without question wherever Holmes lead."

"Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning."

"The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning."

"There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"

"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner."

"I don't take much stock of detectives in novels - chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not business."

"He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?''No, I have not.''Well, well, such is fame!"

"It's every man's business to see justice done."

"Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters."

"I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix."

"No violence, gentlemen - no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!"

"Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence?"

"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."

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."

"What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

"I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom." "Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader."

"Dark nights are unpleasant," "Yes, for strangers to travel,""The clouds are heavy.""Yes, a storm is approaching."

"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 unclubbable 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 offenses, 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."

"It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?"

"I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children."