Top 500 Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

402. “As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. – Watson.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

403. “Round-headed,” he muttered. “Brachycephalic, gray-eyed, black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I presume?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

404. “He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. “Eglow, Eglonitz – here we are, Egria. It.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

405. “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

406. “His neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a trifle dim in the eye.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

407. “Read it up – you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

408. “Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

409. “Lieber Gott, falls es einen Gott gibt, rette meine Seele, falls ich eine Seele habe.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

410. “In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally, maritime London, till we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

411. “A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the theory of reincarnation.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

412. “Punishment has been slow in coming, but it has overtaken you at last.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

413. “Never mind,” he answered; and, slinging his weapon over his shoulder, strode off down the gorge and so away into the heart of the mountain to the haunts of the wild beasts. Amongst them all there was none so fierce and so dangerous as himself.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

414. “All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

415. “I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

416. “Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

417. “Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

418. “The true scientific mind is not to be tied down by its own conditions of time and space. It builds itself an observatory erected upon the border line of present, which separates the infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its sallies even to the beginning and to the end of all things. As.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

419. “The approach to the offices of Girdlestone and Co. was not a very dignified one, nor would the uninitiated who traversed it form any conception of the commercial prosperity of the firm in question.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

420. “This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaol-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

421. “His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior to his character.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

422. “Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

423. “You seem very qualified, sir, to express the negative one. At the same time I would repeat in my own person the words of Thackeray. He said to some objector: ‘What you say is natural, but if you had seen what I have seen you might alter your opinion’. Perhaps sometime you will be able to look into the matter, for your high position in the scientific world would give your opinion great weight.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

424. “If they are too many for us, we shall take two or three of them with us.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

425. “What, indeed? It is art for art’s sake, Watson.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

426. “I believe you are a wizard, Mr. Holmes.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

427. “Great sorrow or great joy should bring intense hunger – not abstinence from food, as our novelists will have it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

428. “When do we start?” “You are not coming.” “Then you are not going,” said I. “I give you my word of honour – and I never broke it in my life – that I will take a cab straight to the police-station and give you away, unless you let me share this adventure with you.” “You can’t help me.” “How do you know that? You can’t tell what may happen. Anyway, my resolution is taken. Other people besides you have self-respect, and even reputations.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

429. “Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

430. “Many men have been hanged on far slighter evidence,” I remarked. “So they have. And many men have been wrongfully hanged.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

431. “To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

432. “I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

433. “He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

434. “The mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

435. “Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

436. “It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

437. “Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

438. “My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughts which sealed the words of affection upon my lips. 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. Worst still, she was rich.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

439. “Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

440. “Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.” This was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

441. “It shows him to be a very wealthy man. How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred a year.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

442. “It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer book is always employed, though there is never a member of that Church among officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

443. “Why should people ever take credit for charity when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

444. “I waited all day without news of him. That night, on the advice of the manager of the hotel, I communicated with the police, and next morning we advertised in all the papers. Our inquiries led to no result; and from that day to this no word has ever been heard of my unfortunate father. He came home with his heart full of hope, to find some peace, some comfort, and instead – ” She put.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

445. “We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

446. “Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

447. “I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

448. “I felt Holmes’s hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake. – Watson.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

449. “Suddenly the dreamer disappeared, and Holmes, the man of action, sprang from his chair.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

450. “And now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all minor matters until to-morrow.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle