“I follow my own methods and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial. I don’t know whether you observed it, Watson, but the colonel’s manner has been just a trifle cavalier to me. I am inclined now to have a little amusement at his expense. Say nothing to him about the horse.”
—Silver Blaze
“Out of my last fifty-three cases my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had the credit in forty-nine. I don’t blame you for not knowing this, for you are young and inexperienced, but if you wish to get on in your new duties you will work with me and not against me.”
—The Naval Treaty
“I go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work of the police. If I have ever separated myself from the official force, it is because they have first separated themselves from me. I have no wish ever to score at their expense. At the same time, Mr. White Mason, I claim the right to work in my own way and give my results at ray own time—complete rather than in stages.”
—The Valley of Fear
“I have written to Lestrade asking him to supply us with the details which are now wanting, and which he will only get after he has secured his man. That he may be safely trusted to do, for although he is absolutely devoid of reason, he is as tenacious as a bulldog when he once understands what he has to do, and, indeed, it is just this tenacity which has brought him to the top at Scotland Yard.”
—The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
“Inspector Gregory, to whom the case has been committed, is an extremely competent officer. Were he but gifted with imagination he might rise to great heights in his profession.”
—Silver Blaze
“All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade’s facts.”
—The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
“When Gregson, or Lestrade, or Athelney Jones are out of their depths—which, by the way, is their normal state—the matter is laid before me.”
—The Sign of Four
“I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”
—The Five Orange Pips
“Local aid is always either worthless or else biased.”
—The Boscombe Valley Mystery
“I was consulted last week by Francois le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art.”
—The Sign of Four
“It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the official police force. I leave them all the evidence which I found.”
—The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
“Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge, and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into French.”
—The Sign of Four
“With two such men as yourself and Lestrade upon the ground, there will not be much for a third party to find out.”
—A Study in Scarlet
