“I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

“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. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove?”

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

“His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure--all the more intense for being held tightly in--his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.”

“When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write above the level of his own eyes.”

“...it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away... from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.”

“It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.”

“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.”

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

“How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!”

“To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”

“I think that I had better go, Holmes."

“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.”

“It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild and menacing.”

“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…there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.”

“For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.”

“You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.”

“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.”

“I felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake.

“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 use 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.”

“A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before 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… So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.”

“A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.”

“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?”

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.”

“Some believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our unending search, our abiding desire for immortality.”

“I never remember feeling tired by work. though idleness exhausts me completely.”

“It’s every man’s business to see justice done.”

“A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.”

“You know,' I answered, with some emotion, for I had never seen so much of Holmes' heart before, 'that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.”

“If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.”

“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.”

“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 honourable title of the woman.”

“Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman."

“A strong wind sang sadly as it bent the trees in front of the Hall. A half moon shone through the dark, flying clouds on to the wild and empty moor.”

“She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.”

“Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.”

“If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.”

“When people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank.”

“It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.”

“There are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one.”

“I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with this case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.”

“I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but is is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”

“Brain, character, soul—only as one sees more of life does one understand how distinct is each.”

“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.”

“The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.”

“You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.”

“Read it up – you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.”

“I love and am loved by a better man than he.”

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

“You did, Doctor, 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.”