Great Throughts Treasury

"Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell."

"Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill."

"Now order the ranks, and fling wide the banners, for our souls are God's and our bodies the king's, and our swords for Saint George and for England!"

"Now, Watson, said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. You’ll come with me, won’t you?"

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

"Of all ruins, that of a fine man is the saddest."

"Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable."

"Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst."

"Of all the great battles in which I had the honor of drawing my sword for the Emperor and for France there was not one which was lost. At Waterloo, although, in a sense, I was present, I was unable to fight, and the enemy was victorious. It is not for me to say that there is a connection between these two things. You know me too well, my friends, to imagine that I would make such a claim. But it gives matter for thought, and some have drawn flattering conclusions from it."

"Oh! A mystery is it?' I cried, rubbing my hands. 'This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. The proper study of mankind is man you know"

"On general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes."

"Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one."

"On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic."

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience."

"One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell. Picture to yourself the unilateral development - the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!"

"Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."

"One night--it was on the twentieth of March, 1888--I was returning from a journey to a patient(for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door... I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problems."

"Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper. ~ Sherlock Holmes"

"Our father would never tell us what it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden legs."

"Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep."

"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."

"People who are in earnest are always interesting, whether you agree with them or not . . ."

"Our young friend makes up for many obvious mental lacunae by some measure of primitive common sense, remarked Challenger."

"Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco."

"Perchance you shall, fair sir, said Nigel, for all that I have seen of you fills me with this desire to go further with you. It is in my mind that we might turn this thing to profit and to honor, for when Sir Robert has spoken to you, I am free to do with you as I will."

"Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion."

"Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!"

"Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment."

"Presume nothing."

"See the value of imagination. It is the one quality which Inspector Gregory lacks. We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified. Let us proceed."

"Shall the world, then, be overrun by oysters?"

"She can project herself into my body and take command of it. She has a parasite soul; yes, she is a parasite, a monstrous parasite. She creeps into my frame as the hermit crab does into the whelk's shell. I am powerless. What can I do? I am dealing with forces of which I know nothing."

"Several incidents in my life have convinced me of spiritual interposition - of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can."

"Really, Watson, you excel yourself, said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt."

"She must be seven-and-twenty now,-a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience."

"She stood framed in the doorway, tall, mystic, silent, with strange, wistful face and deep soul shining in her dark questioning eyes. Nigel kissed the hand that she held out, and all his faith in woman and his reverence came back to him as he looked at her."

"Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. 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. 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. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilize all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do."

"Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her."

"Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks."

"Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home."

"Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either."

"Slate-colored clouds with ragged fringes are drifting slowly overhead. Between them one has a glimpse of higher clouds of a lighter gray. I can hear the gentle swish of the rain striking a clearer note on the gravel path and a duller among the leaves. Sometimes it falls straight and heavy, till the air is full of the delicate gray shading, and for half a foot above the ground there is a haze from the rebound of a million tiny globules."

"So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action."

"So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it."

"So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o'clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned."

"So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense."

"Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal."

"So tomorrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate."

"So they lived, these men, in their own lusty, cheery fashion--rude and rough, but honest, kindly and true. Let us thank God if we have outgrown their vices. Let us pray to God that we may ever hold their virtues."