Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

252. “Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

253. “I do hate the City of London! It is the only thing which ever comes between us.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

254. “My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

255. “Let the high God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon the earth, or if we are ruled by chance.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

256. “Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him: but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting- room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

257. “You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.” My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. 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

258. “Give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and i am in my own proper atmosphere. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

259. “The fair sex is your department.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

260. “There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

261. “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

263. “The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

264. “I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley’s No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

265. “A strong wind sang sadly as it bent the trees in front of the Hall. A half moon shone through the dark, flying clouds on to the wild and empty moor.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

266. “My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

267. “The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it. I’m afraid that all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men cannot avail in this matter.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

268. “I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

269. “When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

270. “And once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complexity of human life so pletifuly presents.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

271. “Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

272. “So we stood hand-in-hand, like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

273. “Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences.” Sherlock Holmes, The Problem of Thor Bridge.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

274. “So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned. – Sherlock Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

275. “The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

276. “What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

277. “It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

278. “Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

279. “Oh, bless you, it doesn’t matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It’s heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. ‘Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

280. “Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

281. “It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

282. “We can’t do these things in the force, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “No wonder you get results that are beyond us. But some of these days you’ll go too far, and you’ll find yourself and your friend in trouble.” “For England, home and beauty – eh, Watson? Martyrs on the altar of our country.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

283. “I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

284. “We have much to hope from the flowers.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

285. “The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

286. “It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

287. “The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

288. “I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

289. “It is not easy to express the inexpressible,” he answered with a laugh.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

290. “Singularity is almost invariably a clue.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

291. “I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

292. “Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

293. “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.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

294. “Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

295. “A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

296. “The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

297. “I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

298. “Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant’s life.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

299. “But our good humour was restored when we saw Lord John Roxton waiting for us upon the platform, his tall, thin figure clad in a yellow tweed shooting-suit. His keen face, with those unforgettable eyes, so fierce and yet so humorous, flushed with pleasure at the sight of us. His ruddy hair was shot with grey, and the furrows upon his brow had been cut a little deeper by Time’s chisel, but in all else he was the Lord John who had been our good comrade in the past.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

300. “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle