“It is always a joy to meet an American, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.”
—The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
“He’s a fine fellow. But he has a struggle to keep up his position. He is far from rich, and has many calls. You noticed, of course, that his boots had been re-soled.”
—The Naval Treaty
“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury.”
—The Greek Interpreter
“Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetrated the fact that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell? Well, well, you need not be downcast, for between ourselves I don’t think that either Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitioner has grasped the overwhelming importance of this incident. One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!”
—The Valley of Fear
“The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We’ll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, lean-jawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“The Hindoo proper has long and thin feet. The sandal-wearing Mohammedan has the great toe well separated from the others because the thong is commonly passed between.”
—The Sign of Four
“Sorry to see that you’ve had the British workman in the house. He’s a token of evil.”
—The Crooked Man
“That’s good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?”
—A Study in Scarlet
“We have him, we have him and I dare swear that before to-morrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men. He’s always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It’s six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.”
—The Greek Interpreter
“I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children. This child’s disposition is abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty’s sake, and whether he derives this from his smiling father, as I should suspect, or from his mother, it bodes evil for the poor girl who is in their power.”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“The Englishman is a patient creature, but at present his temper is a little inflamed, and it would be as well not to try him too far.”
—His Last Bow
“So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one.”
—The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
“There is something very attractive about that livid face at the window.”
—The Yellow Face
“For once you have fallen low. Let us see in the future how high you can rise.”
—The Adventure of the Three Students
“I knew that this man Small had a certain degree of low cunning, but I did not think him capable of anything in the nature of delicate finesse. That is usually a product of higher education.”
—The Sign of Four
“Then he’s no use to me. I’m a practical man.”
—The Valley of Fear
“Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official detective force.”
—The Adventure of the Speckled Band
“I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see.”
—The Red-Headed League
“A clever counsel would tear it all to rags.”
—Silver Blaze
“Lecoq was a miserable bungler, he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a textbook for detectives to teach them what to avoid.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“Well, his position is unique. He has made it for himself. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again. He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his word has decided the national policy. He lives in it. He thinks of nothing else save when, as an intellectual exercise, he unbends if I call upon him and ask him to advise me on one of my little problems.”
—The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
“Run down, my dear fellow, and open the door, for all virtuous folk have been long in bed.”
—The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
“The main thing with people of that sort is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.”
—The Sign of Four
“I am glad to stretch myself, Watson. It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end.”
—The Adventure of the Empty House
“He knows that I am his superior, and acknowledges it to me; but he would cut his tongue out before he would own it to any third person.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing, but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.”
—The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
“What is to me a means of livelihood is to him the merest hobby of a dilettante. He has an extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the books in some of the government departments. Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. From year’s end to year’s end he takes no other exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms.”
—The Greek Interpreter
“On the other hand, like all these stout, little men who do themselves well, he is a plethoric sleeper.”
—The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
“I should not sit here smoking with you if I thought that you were a common criminal, you may be sure of that.”
—The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
“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. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family.”
—The Adventure of the Empty House
“Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose every one has some little immortal spark concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at them. There is no a priori probability about it. A strange enigma is man!”
—The Sign of Four
“The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions, and yours are faithful servants.”
—The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
“When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the ‘Pink ’un’ protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet. I daresay that if I had put £100 down in front of him, that man would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a wager.”
—The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
“Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“It is a question of cubic capacity. A man with so large a brain must have something in it.”
—The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
