Sherlock Holmes

"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. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought"

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive"

"Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night."

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know 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 being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth traveled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it."

"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 skillful 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 this little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for any 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."

"But the Solar System!" I protested. "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

"Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems."

"The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical — so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese."

"It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact."

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment."

"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."

"You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

"One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."

"When a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation."

"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?"

"I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically."

"There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps."

"I had no idea that such individuals exist outside of stories."

"Which is it to-day," I asked, "morphine or cocaine?" He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. "It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?"

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

"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."

"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 Tobaccos'. In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash."

"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

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

"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-coloured 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."

"He smiled gently. "It is of the first importance," he cried, "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 repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.""

"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule."

"Holmes," I said in a whisper, "a child has done this horrid thing!"

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

"You know my methods. Apply them."

"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."

"It is the unofficial force — the Baker Street irregulars."

"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."

"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear."

"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."

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. 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. 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 reasoner 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. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory."

"...but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you, until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right."

"I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life."

"As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be."

"It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes."

"I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see."

"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 generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."

"There is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."

"Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details."

"[Sherlock Holmes quoting:] "There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.""

"Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home."

"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."

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."

"You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles."

"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."

"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 endeavoured in my case to do."

"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, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles."

"It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes’ requests, for they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery."

"On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences."

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know."

""You are Holmes, the meddler." My friend smiled. "Holmes, the busybody!" His smile broadened. "Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!" Holmes chuckled heartily."

"When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has the nerve and he has the knowledge."

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

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."

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

"I am glad of all details," remarked my friend, "whether they seem to you to be relevant or not."

"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."

"Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person."

"It is more than possible; it is probable."

"That is the case as it appears to the police, and improbable as it is, all other explanations are more improbable still."

""Is there any other 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."

"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt."

"I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain. Results without causes are much more impressive."

"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."

""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."

"Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic."

"Out of my last 53 cases 49 have been given full credit to the police and the rest to me."

"If I were assured of your eventual destruction I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept my own."

"He is the Napoleon of crime."

"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."

"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

"We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination."

"There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you."

"Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted."

"You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious."

"I had little doubt that I had come to the end of my career when I perceived the somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow pathway which led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his gray eyes. I exchanged some remarks with him, therefore, and obtained his courteous permission to write the short note which you afterwards received. I left it with my cigarette-box and my stick, and I walked along the pathway, Moriarty still at my heels. When I reached the end I stood at bay. He drew no weapon, but he rushed at me and threw his long arms around me. He knew that his own game was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself upon me. We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds, and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went. With my face over the brink, I saw him fall for a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounded off, and splashed into the water."

"Work is the best antidote to sorrow."

"There is no prospect of danger, or I should not dream of stirring out without you."

"What one man can invent another can discover."

"It was vain to urge that his time was already fully occupied, for the young lady had come with the determination to tell her story, and it was evident that nothing short of force could get her out of the room until she had done so. With a resigned air and a somewhat weary smile, Holmes begged the beautiful intruder to take a seat and to inform us what it was that was troubling her."

"We had got as far as this, when who should walk in but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the tap-room and had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous. He ended a string of abuse by a vicious back-hander, which I failed to entirely avoid. The next few minutes were delicious. It was a straight left against a slogging ruffian. I emerged as you see me. Mr. Woodley went home in a cart. So ended my country trip, and it must be confessed that, however enjoyable, my day on the Surrey border has not been much more profitable than your own."

"I have never been in Africa in my life, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Busybody Holmes!"

"It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong."

"We're not jealous of you down at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are 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."

"There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast."

"One should always look for a possible alternative, and provide against it. It is the first rule of criminal investigation."

"Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs."

"For once you have fallen low. Let us see, in the future, how high you can rise."

"There is so much red tape in these matters."

"Dr Leslie Armstrong "I have heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I am aware of your profession — one of which I by no means approve."Holmes "In that, Doctor, you will find yourself in agreement with every criminal in the country.""

"A draghound will follow aniseed from here to John o' Groat's, and our friend, Armstrong, would have to drive through the Cam before he would shake Pompey off his trail."

"Come, Watson, come!" he cried. "The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!"

"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."

"What I know is unofficial; what he knows is official."

"Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department."

"Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened."

"It is a capital mistake to theorise in advance of the facts."

""I am inclined to think -- " said I."

"What do you make of it, Holmes?" "It is obviously an attempt to convey secret information." "But what is the use of a cipher message without the cipher?"

"The vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited."

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

"Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her."

"There should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation."

"Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards!"

"There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible."

"There is no part of the body which varies so much as the human ear."

"Education never ends Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last."

""Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H." It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets."

"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Think of Mycroft's note, of the Admiralty, the Cabinet, the exalted person who waits for news. We are bound to go." My answer was to rise from the table. "You are right, Holmes. We are bound to go."

"Holmes, you are not yourself. A sick man is but a child."

"You fidget me beyond endurance. You, a doctor — you are enough to drive a patient into an asylum."

"Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem."

"You and I, Watson, we have done our part. Shall the world, then, be overrun by oysters? No, no; horrible!"

"But I have reasons to suppose that this opinion would be very much more frank and valuable if he imagines that we are alone."

"I give you my word that for three days I have tasted neither food nor drink until you were good enough to pour me out that glass of water. But it is the tobacco which I find most irksome."

"Three days of absolute fast does not improve one's beauty, Watson."

"Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph."

"I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity it is certainly beyond me. Yet we must exhaust all natural explanations before we fall back upon such a theory as this."

"I think, Watson, that I shall resume that course of tobacco-poisoning which you have so often and so justly condemned."

"To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces."

"We are devil-ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish is devil-ridden! Satan himself is loose in it! We are given over into his hands!"

"It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the official police force."

"I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an unjustifiable experiment even for one's self, and doubly so for a friend. I am really very sorry."

"Surely the clearest proof of it is that, knowing what I know, I have sent for you and not for the police."

"I have heard your reasons and regard them as unconvincing and inadequate. We will pass that."

"I followed you.""I saw no one.""That is what you may expect to see when I follow you."

"Some fumes which are not poisonous would be a welcome change."

"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."

"It may be some fussy, self-important fool; it may be a matter of life or death."

"I should say that there is no more dangerous man in Europe." "I have had several opponents to whom that flattering term has been applied."

"I am sorry. I am accustomed to have mystery at one end of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing. I fear, Sir James, that I must decline to act."

"A complex mind. All great criminals have that."

"I have my plans. The first thing is to exaggerate my injuries. They'll come to you for news. Put it on thick, Watson. Lucky if I live the week out — concussion — delirium — what you like! You can't overdo it."

"I have found out who our client is," I cried, bursting with my great news. "Why, Holmes, it is —""It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman," said Holmes, holding up a restraining hand. "Let that now and forever be enough for us."

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

"I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go."

"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."

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

"Of course I remembered him," said I as I laid down the letter. "Big Bob Ferguson, the finest three-quarter Richmond ever had. He was always a good-natured chap. It's like him to be so concerned over a friend's case." Holmes looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head. "I never get your limits, Watson," said he. "There are unexplored possibilities about you. Take a wire down, like a good fellow. 'Will examine your case with pleasure.'" --"Your case!" --"We must not let him think that this agency is a home for the weak-minded."

"It is simpler to deal direct."

"In my profession all sorts of odd knowledge comes useful, and this room of yours is a storehouse of it."

"Well, Watson, we can but possess our souls in patience and see what the hour may bring."

"It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation."

"We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception."

"We can but try."

"Come at once if convenient — if inconvenient come all the same."

"When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny."

"That the dog should die was after the beautiful, faithful nature of dogs."

"I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles."

"Dogs don't make mistakes."

"Cut out the poetry, Watson."

"Things must be done decently and in order."

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

"Quick Watson, the needle."