Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

305. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

315. “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

316. “If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

320. “Schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf, Denn zum wiirdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

322. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

324. “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

325. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

327. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

332. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

335. “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

336. “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

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle

339. “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

340. “Indeed!” I murmured.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

341. “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

342. “The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual”.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

343. “The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

344. “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

345. “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

346. “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

347. “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

348. “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

349. “He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

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

— Arthur Conan Doyle