“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
—A Case of Identity
“Now draw up and warm your toes. Here’s a cigar, and the doctor has a prescription containing hot water and a lemon, which is good medicine on a night like this. It must be something important which has brought you out in such a gale.”
—The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”
—The Red-Headed League
“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.”
—The Sign of Four
“This may be some trifling intrigue and I cannot break my other important research for the sake of it.”
—The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
“Do not go asleep, your very life may depend upon it. Have your pistol ready in case we should need it. I will sit on the side of the bed, and you in that chair.”
—The Adventure of the Speckled Band
“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.”
—The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
“For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”
—The Red-Headed League
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
—The Valley of Fear
“Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world.”
—The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in 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. 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 Naval Treaty
