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

“Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”

“What one man can invent, another can discover.”

“A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.”

“Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”

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

“I wanted to end the world, but I'll settle for ending yours.”

“My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], "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.”

“From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.”

“The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.”

“Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson.”

“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.”

“I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?”

“There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.”

“I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.”

“No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.”

“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

“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.”

“Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.”

“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

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

“The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.”

“Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind."

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

“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

“I cannot live without brainwork. 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 duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?”

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

“There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.”

“Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.”

“Anything is better than stagnation.”

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

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

“There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear for the most part to dislike me.

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

“Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.”

“The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

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

“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.”

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”

“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.”

“The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.”

“When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.”

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

“The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”

“You know my methods. Apply them.”