Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

52. “Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

53. “Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

54. “Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

55. “It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

56. “To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

57. “It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

58. “Work is the best antidote to sorrow.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

59. “Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

60. “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

61. “Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You can find yourself insensibly twisting them round to suit your theories.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

62. “I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

63. “I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

64. “I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

65. “Steel True, Blade Straight.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

66. “There’s a light in a woman’s eyes that speaks louder than words.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

67. “A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

68. “No violence, gentlemen – no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

69. “To a great mind nothing is little.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

70. “We can’t command our love, but we can our actions.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

71. “There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, 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 fellowmen.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

72. “Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

73. “I have wrought my simple plan If I give one hour of joy To the boy who’s half a man, Or the man who’s half a boy.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

74. “I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

75. “Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

76. “I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

77. “It’s a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

78. “For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

79. “There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

80. “If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

81. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

82. “We can but try.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

83. “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?? ‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’ ‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’ ‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

84. “Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

85. “The work is its own reward.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

86. “It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

87. “My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

88. “I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

89. “The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

90. “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

91. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.” “Frequently.” “How often?” “Well, some hundreds of times.” “Then how many are there?” “How many? I don’t know.” “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

92. “You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

93. “A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

94. “So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

95. “It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

96. “I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

97. “It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

98. “Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

99. “Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

100. “You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle