872 Quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle

So unworldly was he--or so capricious--that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity.

In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.

The absence of the latter means nothing, though its presence may mean everything

When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.

The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.

I am lost without my Boswell.[Sherlock Holmes on Dr. Watson.]

That hurts my pride, Watson. It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now...

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.

There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. 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. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.