Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.

No matter what mood a man may be in, when once he has passed through the magic door he can summon the world's greatest to sympathize with him in it. If he be thoughtful, here are the kings of thought. If he be dreamy, here are the masters of fancy. [...] The dead are such good company that one may come to think too little of the living.

Surely there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not that familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul embalmed in cere-cloth, natron of leather and printer's ink. Each cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The personalities of the writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here are their very spirits at your command.

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more.

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

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

You see, but you do not observe.

Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.

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.

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra.

What one man can invent, another can discover.

The game is afoot!

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

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

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.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

You have a grand gift of silence, Watson, said he. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

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