“What has become of any brains that God has given me?”
—The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
“How slow-witted I have been, and how nearly I have committed the blunder of my lifetime!”
—The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
“Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson—which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence that anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs.”
—Silver Blaze
“So long as he was free in London, my life would really not have been worth living. Night and day the shadow would have been over me, and sooner or later his chance must have come. What could I do? I could not shoot him at sight, or I should myself be in the dock. There was no use appealing to a magistrate. They cannot interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion.”
—The Adventure of the Empty House
“Many a man has been wrongfully hanged.”
—The Boscombe Valley Mystery
“Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely. I have been a little pressed of late. Have you any objection to my closing your shutters?”
—The Final Problem
“It is human to err, and at least no one can accuse you of being a callous criminal.”
—The Adventure of the Three Students
“You have erred, perhaps, in attempting to put color and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“God help us! Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never heard of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter’s words, and say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.’”
—The Boscombe Valley Mystery
“Legally, we are putting ourselves hopelessly in the wrong, but I think that it is worth it.”
—The Yellow Face
“There is material here. There is scope. I am dull indeed not to have understood its possibilities.”
—The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
“There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“If I had not taken things for granted, if I had approached everything with care which I should have shown had we approached the case de novo and had no cut-and-dried story to warp my mind, should I not then have found something more definite to go upon?”
—The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
“Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson, it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed. Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them.”
—The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
“Our birds are flown and the nest empty.”
—The Greek Interpreter
“I see some light in the darkness, but it may possibly flicker out.”
—The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
“I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of one of the absolute fools in Europe.”
—The Man with the Twisted Lip
“Watson, 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.”
—The Yellow Face
“It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.”
—The Adventure of the Second Stain
