My Favorite Sherlcok Holmes Lines and Quotes

"Elementary."

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

You are the one fixed point in a changing age.

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

Everything in this world is relative

What one man can invent another can discover.

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

We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

Education never ends. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

It is my business to know what other people don't know.

There should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation.

Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.

It is more than possible; it is probable.

Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened.


Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.

"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.

Results without causes are much more impressive.

There is no part of the body which varies so much as the human ear.
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

The little things are infinitely the most important.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary

problems.

It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit — destructive to the logical faculty.

You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick;

When a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.

"The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?"

"It is of the first importance, not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities."

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward.

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

Come at once if convenient — if inconvenient come all the same.

There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his

library, where he can get it if he wants it.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

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.

If I were assured of your eventual destruction I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept my own.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

There can be no question, of the value of exercise before breakfast.

One should always look for a possible alternative, and provide against it.

There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.

We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

A sick man is but a child.

I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity it is certainly beyond me. Yet we must exhaust all natural explanations before we fall back upon such a theory as this.