“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.”
—The Red-Headed League
“I’m sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to you. It is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the hedges and the catkins on the hazels once again. With a spud, a tin box, and an elementary book on botany, there are instructive days to be spent.”
—The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
“Watson, I think our quiet rest in the country has been a distinct success and I shall certainly return, much invigorated, to Baker Street to-morrow.”
—The Reigate Puzzle
“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men …”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“Ah, Mr. Mac, you would not read that excellent local compilation which described the concealment of King Charles. People did not hide in those days without excellent hiding places, and the hiding place that has once been used may be again.”
—The Valley of Fear
“Look out of this window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then blend once more into the cloud-bank. The thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.”
—The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
“My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“It is well they don’t have days of fog in Latin countries—the countries of assassination.”
—The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
“A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“It’s a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London.”
—The Red-Headed League
“No, no. No crime. Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal.”
—The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
“I know what is the matter with me. It is a coolie disease from Sumatra—a thing that the Dutch know more about than we, though they have made little of it up to date. One thing only is certain. It is infallibly deadly, and it is horribly contagious.”
—The Adventure of the Dying Detective
“There is nothing more to be said or to be done to-night, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellow-men.”
—The Five Orange Pips
“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.”
—The Red-Headed League
“Let us walk in these beautiful woods and give a few hours to the birds and flowers.”
—The Adventure of Black Peter
“This northern air is invigorating and pleasant, so I propose to spend a few days upon your moors, and to occupy my mind as best I may.”
—The Adventure of the Priory School
“You may remember the old Persian saying, ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for who so snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.”
—A Case of Identity
“It is cocaine, a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?”
—The Sign of Four
“Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. No doubt there are natural enemies which limit the increase of the creatures. Shall the world, then, be overrun by oysters? No, no; horrible!”
—The Adventure of the Dying Detective
“The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“Dear me, what a chorus of groans, cries, and bleatings! What a ragbag of singular happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to a student of the unusual!”
—The Adventure of the Red Circle
“Had I been recognized in that den my life would not have been worth an hour’s purchase; for I have used it before now for my own purposes, and the rascally lascar who runs it has sworn to have vengeance upon me. There is a trap-door at the back of that building, near the corner of Paul’s Wharf, which could tell some strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless nights. We should be rich men if we had £1000 for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It is the vilest murder-trap on the whole riverside.”
—The Man with the Twisted Lip
“Well, Watson, we seem to have fallen upon evil days.”
—The Adventure of the Dying Detective
“From the point of view of the criminal expert, London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”
—The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
