Arthur Conan Doyle
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.Collection: Truth
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.Collection: Intelligence
We can't command our love, but we can our actions.Collection: Love
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.Collection: Truth
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.Collection: Great
Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.Collection: Women
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.Collection: Truth
For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.Collection: Imagination
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.Collection: Wisdom
Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.Collection: Knowledge
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.Collection: Truth
Where there is no imagination there is no horror.Collection: Imagination
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.Collection: Truth
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.Collection: Funny
Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.Collection: Nature
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.
The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.
A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.
A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.
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.
I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.
Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.
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.
I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.
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.
The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.
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.
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.Collection: Life
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.Collection: Life
When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.Collection: Motivational
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?Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Education
When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.Collection: Inspirational
Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.Collection: Healthy
You see, but you do not observe.Collection: Curiosity
You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.Collection: Light