“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”
—The Sign of Four
“Breadth of view is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest. You will excuse these remarks from one who, though a mere connoisseur of crime, is still rather older and perhaps more experienced than yourself.”
—The Valley of Fear
“Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles.…The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”
—The Valley of Fear
“The old sweet song. How often have I heard it in days gone by. It was a favorite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs.”
—His Last Bow
“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life. Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance.”
—The Valley of Fear
“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“A remarkable wine. Our friend upon the sofa has assured me that it is from Franz Josef’s special cellar at the Schoenbrunn Palace. Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapor does not help the palate.”
—His Last Bow
“Our difficulties are not over. Our police work ends, but our legal work begins.”
—The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
“Danger is part of my trade.”
—The Final Problem
“What the deuce is the solar system to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?”
—A Study in Scarlet
“This man’s occupation is gone. He is lost if he returns to London. If I read his character right he will devote his whole energies to revenging himself upon me. He said as much in our short interview, and I fancy that he meant it. I should certainly recommend you to return to your practice.”
—The Final Problem
“Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. I went out about midday to transact some business in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash. I sprang for the foot-path and saved myself by the fraction of a second. The van dashed round by Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant. I kept to the pavement after that, but as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses and was shattered to fragments at my feet. I called the police and had the place examined. There were slates and bricks piled up on the roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing. I took a cab after that and reached my brother’s rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day. Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. I knocked him down, and the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I daresay, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles away. You will not wonder that my first act on entering your rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by some less conspicuous exit than the front door.”
—The Final Problem
“In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task.”
—The Hound of the Baskervilles
“I have taken to living by my wits.”
—The Musgrave Ritual
“It is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. It’s a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“The clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is over.”
—The Man with the Twisted Lip
