Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “It is not what we know, but what we can prove.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

202. “You are aware that I have some proficiency in the good old British sport of boxing.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

203. “Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

204. “Give me your details, and from an armchair I will return you an excellent expert opinion.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

205. “But how could you guess what the motive was?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

206. “Sherlock Holmes had listened with the utmost intentness to the statement of the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the deep furrow between them showed that he needed no exhortation to concentrate all his attention upon a problem which, apart from the tremendous interests involved must appeal so directly to his love of the complex and the unusual. He now drew out his notebook and jotted down one or two memoranda.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

207. “It is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

208. “Things are always easier when imagination ceases and action begins.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

209. “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

210. “El hombre no es nada, la obra lo es todo.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

211. “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?” “A fixture also.” “On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire.” “In spirit?” “Exactly. My body has remained in this arm-chair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

212. “Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

213. “Look at you. Why is the only woman you ever cared about a world-class criminal – are you a masochist?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

214. “I confess that I covet your skull.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

215. “From the instant that we passed the rise, we could no longer see the vehicle, but we hastened onward at such a pace that my sedentary life began to tell upon me, and I was compelled to fall behind. Holmes, however, was always in training, for he had inexhaustible stores of nervous energy upon which to draw.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

216. “How wise and how merciful is that provision of nature by which his earthly anchor is usually loosened by many little imperceptible tugs, until his consciousness has drifted out of its untenable earthly harbor into the great sea beyond!”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

217. “Nada hay nuevo bajo el sol... Cada acto o cada cosa tiene un precedente en el pasado.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

218. “I’m not going to tell you much more of the case, Doctor. You know a conjuror gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

219. “This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

220. “There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.” a.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

221. “She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

222. “I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

223. “The chief proof of man’s real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

224. “A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

225. “Amberley excelled at chess – a mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

226. “A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

227. “I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

228. “I wanted to end the world, but I’ll settle for ending yours.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

229. “It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

230. “Then, how do you know?” “I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?” “My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

231. “It was a September evening, and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

232. “I confess that I have been blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

233. “The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

234. “You really an automaton – a calculating machine. There is something positively inhuman in you at times.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

235. “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

236. “It’s every man’s business to see justice done.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

237. “The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

238. “A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

239. “I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

240. “I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

241. “I would not tell them too much,” said Holmes. “Women are never to be entirely trusted, – not the best of them.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

242. “The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

243. “I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

244. “The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

245. “His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

246. “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

247. “The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

248. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes... was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

249. “We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

250. “I would not tell them too much,” said Holmes. “Women are never to be entirely trusted, – not the best of them.” I did not pause to argue over this atrocious sentiment. “I.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle