“I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.”

“There are no fools so troublesome as those of the mind”

“Yes, there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe: 'Schade, daß die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf; Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.'”

“My mind 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 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.”

“It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs”

“I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.”

“I shall never do that,' I answered; 'you have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.”

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

“There are strange red depths in the soul of the most commonplace man.”

“I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence.”

“My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughts which sealed the words of affection upon my lips. 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. Worst still, she was rich.”

“My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”

“There's many a man who never tells his adventures, for he can't hope to be believed.”

“My line of thoughts about dogs is analogous. 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.”

“[O]n general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.”

“To a great mind, nothing is little.”

“It is that the chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”

“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.”

“He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri", the little girl continued. "I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It's not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees.”

“It is only when you touch the higher that you realize how low we may be among the possibilities of creation.”

“The ideal reasoner would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also the results which would follow from it.”

“It is all in the way of professional experience.

“It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.”

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

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance”

“From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views.

“You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist out of stories.”

“All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.”

“Watson,' said he, 'if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”

“Who are you, then?” “My name is Sherlock Holmes.” “Good Lord!” “You have heard of me, I see.”

“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.”

“It might have driven me mad; but I was always a pretty stubborn one, so I just held on and bided my time.”

“In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.”

“By my soul! I would rather have a dry death," quoth Sir Oliver. "Though, Mort Dieu! I have eaten so many fish that it were but justice that the fish should eat me.”

“It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.”

“There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.”

“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.”

“Though unmusical, German is the most expressive of all languages,”

“Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.”

“For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”

“Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. - Sherlock Holmes”

“We give you best, Holmes. I believe you are the devil himself.”

“My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser.”

“There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans.”

“My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man.”

“My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic.”

“...I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I'm well, but those are the principal ones at present.”

“It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.”

“It was worth a wound - it was worth many wounds - to know the depth of loyalty and love that lay behind that cold mask.”

“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.”