Arthur Conan Doyle
33 quotes
Biography
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own."
"The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods."
"We can't command our love, but we can our actions."
"It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it."
"There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them."
"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent."
"There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book."
"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' 'The dog did nothing in the night-time.''That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes."
"My dear Watson,"said [Sherlock Holmes], "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. 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."
"A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her."
"There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done."
"It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."
"Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion."
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data."
"There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy."
"The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest."
"It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."
"There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"
"Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."
"The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished."
"These pictures are not occult, but they are psychic because everything that emanates from the human spirit or human brain is psychic. It is not supernatural; nothing is. It is preternatural in the sense that it is not known to our ordinary senses. It is the effect of the joining on the one hand of imagination, and on the other hand of some power of materialization. The imagination, I may say, comes from me — the materializing power from elsewhere."
"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hopes seem hardly worth having, just mount a bicycle and go for a good spin down the road, without thought of anything but the ride you are taking."
"I can tell you that it is no game for children, and I will confess that, in spite of my nine campaigns, I felt myself turn pale when the first ball flashed past me."