Arthur Conan Doyle

The ideal reasoner, he remarked, 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 all the results which would follow from it.

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

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

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

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

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

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.

A trusty comrade is always of use and a chronicler still more so.

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

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

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.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

We can't command our love, but we can our actions.

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

'Excellent' I cried. 'Elementary,' said he.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces the same effect as if you worked a love-story into the fifth proposition of Euclid.

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.

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

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.