Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

102. “Several incidents in my life have convinced me of spiritual interposition – of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

103. “Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

104. “If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

105. “Patience, my friend, patience! You will find in time that it has everything to do with it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

106. “When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

107. “But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

108. “What a lovely thing a rose is!”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

109. “It is more than possible; it is probable.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

110. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

111. “I abhour the dull routine of existence” – Sherlock Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

112. “You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! – and that! – and that! – and that!”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

113. “There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

114. “What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

115. “Nature is the true revelation of the Deity to man. The nearest green field is the inspired page from which you may read all that it is needful for you to know.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

116. “London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

117. “I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

118. “It is of the first importance not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, – a factor in a problem. – Sherlock Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

119. “Dogs don’t make mistakes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

120. “Hot hate is twin brother to hot love.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

121. “For once you have fallen low. Let us see in the future how high you can rise.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

122. “Eliminate the impossible, and what ever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” – Sherlock Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

123. “There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

124. “It is a fool’s plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

125. “Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

126. “I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

127. “You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

128. “You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

129. “Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

130. “One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

131. “Misfortunes never come single.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

132. “Violence recoils on the violent.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

133. “It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

134. “I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won’t do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual – that’s to say, you handled it fairly well.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

135. “Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

136. “I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

137. “Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

138. “There are no fools so troublesome as those of the mind.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

139. “No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

140. “Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

141. “We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

142. “If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

143. “My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

144. “Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

145. “The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

146. “We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

147. “Crime is a commonplace, existence is a commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

148. “Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

149. “The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

150. “A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn’t we use a little art jargon? There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle