A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle

A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle


His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.
Arthur Conan Doyle

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
Arthur Conan Doyle

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.
Arthur Conan Doyle

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.
Arthur Conan Doyle

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Arthur Conan Doyle

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Arthur Conan Doyle

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
Arthur Conan Doyle