Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes (1859-1930)

“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.”

“London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The whole doctrine of original sin, the Fall, the vicarious Atonement, the placation of the Almighty by blood—all this is abhorrent to me. The spirit-guides do not insist upon these aspects of religion.”

“The whole doctrine of original sin, the Fall, the vicarious Atonement, the placation of the Almighty by blood—all this is abhorrent to me. The spirit-guides do not insist upon these aspects of religion.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What of the bow?   The bow was made in England: Of true wood, of yew-wood,   The wood of English bows;     So men who are free     Love the old yew-tree And the land where the yew-tree grows.”

“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.””

“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a lovestory or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”

“What of the men?   The men were bred in England: The bowmen—the yeomen,   The lads of dale and fell.       Here’s to you—and to you!       To the hearts that are true And the land where the true hearts dwell.”

“What I hope is that, when the whole district is full of these little rifle clubs, we may then get a central range to which they could all adjourn. Bisley is very useful to men of means, but to the ordinary civilian rifleman it might as well be in the moon. We must have local ranges if the men are really to get the good of them.”

“There was the huge famished brute, its black muzzle buried in Rucastle's throat, while he writhed and screamed upon the ground. Running up, I blew its brains out, and it fell over with its keen white teeth still meeting in the great creases of his neck. With much labour we separated them, and carried him, living but horribly mangled, into the house.”

“"Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."”

“"The indications would be consistent with the presence of a saber-toothed tiger, such as are still found among the breccia of our caverns; but the creature actually seen was undoubtedly of a larger and more reptilian character. Personally, I should pronounce for allosaurus.""Or megalosaurus," said Summerlee."Exactly. Any one of the larger carnivorous dinosaurs would meet the case. Among them are to be found all the most terrible types of animal life that have ever cursed the earth or blessed a museum."”

“In the morning it was not long before we discovered the source of the hideous uproar which had aroused us in the night. The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery. From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself.”

“Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.”

“There was neither fortune nor title in the man's pedigree, and yet he sprang from the salt of the earth, for he came from that lowland Scottish peasant stock which was one of the finest stocks that the world could show, if one might judge from its results. The limitations of these men might be marked, but there sprang from them every now and again one who could voice the feelings of his fellow men, and such a man was Robert Burns.”

“The most ordinary spiritual void surrounds Jack London's adventures, recalling a similar void which envelops the journalistic feuilleton or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories.”