Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

302. “So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

303. “It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through – a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

304. “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

305. “A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

306. “The main thing with people of that sort is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do, they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

307. “I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

308. “There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

309. “You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

310. “So tomorrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

311. “The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

312. “I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

313. “There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

314. “It is all in the way of professional experience. – Sherlock Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

315. “The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

316. “To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

317. “I have taken to living by my wits.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

318. “Three quiet days. This hell fiend is like a cat with a mouse. She lets me loose only to pounce upon me again. I am never so frightened as when every thing is still.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

319. “It is quite a three-pipe problem.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

320. “To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

321. “I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

322. “She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

323. “Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

324. “Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence – ‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

325. “In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

326. “There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

327. “A sick man is but a child, and so I will treat you.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

328. “This world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

329. “For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

330. “It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

331. “There was a brisk northern wind, heavy and wet with the salt of the sea, and he felt, as he turned his face to it, fresh life and strength surging in his blood and bracing his limbs.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

332. “Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

333. “Indeed!” I murmured.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

334. “It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious, because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

335. “The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without delay. Its finder has carried it off therefore to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

336. “A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

337. “What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another? It is meaningless. Each produces the same result. But those fierce fights, when in the dawn of the ages the cave-dwellers held their own against the tier folk, or the elephants first found that they had a master, those were the real conquests – the victories that count.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

338. “But the Solar System!” I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “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.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

339. “Lying across his chest was a curious weapon, a shotgun with the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the triggers. It was clear that this had been fired at close range and that he had received the whole charge in the face, blowing his head almost to pieces. The triggers had been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more destructive.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

340. “She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

341. “Now, Watson, confess yourself utterly taken aback,” said he. “I am.” “I ought to make you sign a paper to that effect.” “Why?” “Because in five minutes you will say that it is all so absurdly simple.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

342. “There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

343. “Man or woman?” I asked. “Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

344. “However, wretch as he was, he was still living under the shield of British law, and I have no doubt, Inspector, that you will see that, though that shield may fail to guard, the sword of justice is still there to avenge.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

345. “The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest. You.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

346. “We can pass the eight Dreadnoughts, if we are sure of the eight Shackleton’s.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

347. “Well,” said Lestrade, “I’ve seen you handle a good many cases, Mr. Holmes, but I don’t know that I ever knew a more workmanlike one than that. We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow, there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

348. “Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

349. “It is hard luck on a young fellow to have expensive tastes, great expectations, aristocratic connections but no actual money in his pocket, and no profession by which he may earn any.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

350. “Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle