Sherlockian QuotesThis is a featured page


  • Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone"My name is Sherlock Holmes and it is my business to know what other people don't know."
  • "Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!"
  • "Hopkins has called me in seven times, and on each occasion his summons has been entirely justified."
  • "Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand. "
  • "Has anything escaped me? I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?" (Dr. Watson)
  • "What I know is unofficial; What he knows is official. I have the right to private judgment, but he has none. He must disclose all, or he is a traitor to his service."
  • "You owe a very humble apology to that noble lad, your son, who has carried himself in this matter as I should be proud to see my own son do, should I ever chance to have one. "
  • "There, Watson, this infernal case had haunted me for ten days. I hereby banish it completely from my presence. "
  • "There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast. "
  • "It is a question of cubic capacity. A man with so large a brain must have something in it."
  • "When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the Pink UN protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet."
  • "It is always awkward doing business with an alias."
  • "Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. "
  • "Local aid is always either worthless or else biased. "
  • "According to my experience it is not possible to reach the platform of a Metropolitan train without exhibiting one's ticket."
  • "I play the game for the game's own sake."
  • "Although he [Lestrade] is absolutely devoid of reason, he is as tenacious as a bulldog when he once understands what he has to do. "
  • "Elementary, my dear Watson!"
  • "It is a wicked world, Watson, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime, it is the worst of all."
  • "Come at once if convenient--if not convenient, come all the same."
  • "We can but try."
  • "I do not like to create mysteries, but at this present moment, it is most impossible to go into long and tenacious explanations."
  • "Because it is my desire. Is that not enough?"
  • "Ah, Watson, we seem to have fallen upon evil days."
  • "I wonder how a battery feels when it poors energy into a non-conductor."
  • "Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not covered in oysters, so prolific the creatures seem."
  • "Malingering is a subject that I will someday write a monograph on."
  • "Journeys end in lovers' meetings."
  • "My dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture where the most logical mind may be at fault."
  • "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms."
  • "I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention."
  • "The wages of sin, Watson - the wages of sin!"
  • It was a horrible scream, a howl of horror, dread, regret and fear all mingled up in one, dreadful shriek.
  • "Though unmusical, German is the most expressive of all languages."
  • "The Englishman is a patient creature, but at present his temper is a little inflamed and it would be as well not to try him too far."
  • "Out of my last fifty-three cases, my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had all the credit in forty-nine."
  • "So many cases, filled with red tape."
  • "Mrs. Hudson has risen to the occasion. Her cuisine is a little limited, but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman."
  • "My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting."
  • "This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie."
  • "Watson will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic."
  • "I have a peculiar taste in these matters."
  • "I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case."
  • "American slang is most expressive sometimes."
  • "Do not dream of going, Watson, for I very much prefer having a witness, if only as a check to my own memory."
  • "Have a cigarette, Mr. McFarlane. Beyond obvious fact that you are an asthmatic, I know nothing whatsoever about you."
  • "There is no prospect of danger, or I should not dream of stirring out without you. "
  • "All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts."
  • "I am familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tires."
  • "This case deserves to be a classic."
  • "It is art for art's sake."
  • "I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the program, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective and I want to introspect."
  • "We are spies in an enemy's country."
  • "My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
  • "The fates are against you, Watson. "
  • "I am afraid that my explanation may disillusion you, but it has always been my habit to hide none of my methods, either from my friend Watson of from anyone who might take an intelligent interest in them."
  • "These are much deeper waters than I had thought."
  • "Come, friend Watson, the curtain rings up for the last act."
  • "See the value of imagination. It is the one quality which Gregory lacks."
  • "I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee."
  • "I suppose I am the only one in the world. I'm a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is."
  • "I have my eye on a suit in Baker Street."
  • "I have to be careful, for I dabble in poisons a great deal."
  • "I've found it! I've found it! I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by hemoglobin, and by nothing else!"
  • "These are deep waters."
  • "Results without causes are much more impressive."
  • "The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you know how to use it."
  • "The theories which I have expressed, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical - so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese."
  • "It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact."
  • "Supposing I unravel the whole matter, you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade and Co. will pocket all the credit. That comes of being an unofficial personage."
  • "Gregson is the smartest of the Scotland Yarders. He and Lestrade are the pick of a bad lot."
  • "You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."
  • "They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work."
  • "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
  • "We must not let him think that this agency is a home for the weak-minded. "
  • "It's a wicked thing to tell fibs, you know."
  • "You can't play with sharp-edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands."
  • "It may surprise you to know that I prefer to work anonymously, and that it is the problem itself which attracts me."
  • "Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences."
  • "Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs."
  • "All the cards are at present against us."
  • "I reached this one by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag."
  • "Everything comes in circles - even Professor Moriarty. . . It's all been done before, and will be again."
  • "Mediocrity know nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius."
  • "Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life. Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well staged performance. Surely our profession would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results."
  • "When water is near and a weight is missing it is not a very far-fetched supposition that something has been sunk in the water."
  • "My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built."
  • "Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world."
  • "There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible."
  • "Pipes are occasionally of extraordinary interest. Nothing has more individuality save, perhaps, watches and bootlaces."
  • "If you wish to preserves your incognito, I suggest that you cease to write your name upon the lining of your hat, or else that you turn the crown towards the person whom you are addressing."
  • "There's blackmail in it, or I am much mistaken."
  • "I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely."
  • "The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of my profession."
  • "Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper "Norbury" in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you. "
  • "Things must be done decently and orderly."
  • "Watson and I, also, have our diplomatic secrets."
  • "If you had killed Watson, you would not have made it out of this room alive."
  • "Cut out the poetry, Watson."


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