Holmes Quotes

“I followed you.'

I saw no one.'

That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Die Teufelskralle

“Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“The two of us, we're the best kind of disaster. Apples and oranges. Well, more like apples and machetes.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.”
― Vincent Starrett

“We weren't Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I was ok with that, I thought. We had things they didn't, too. Like electricity, and refrigerators. And Mario Kart.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“I began wondering if there was some kind of Watsonian guide for the care and keeping of Holmeses.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“I hope that the kind reader recognises this as a despairing attempt at humour.”
― Nancy Springer

“In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“If I remember rightly, you on one occasion defined my limits in a very precise fashion."

"Yes," [Watson] answered, laughing. "It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mudstains 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. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“You look at me as if I were a conjuror,' Holmes remarked, with a laugh.”
― Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk

“Holmes speaks of grief “staining backward” through the pages of life; but Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise and flooded with rose-colour her whole previous drab existence. She found it hard to believe that she had ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“Kalau kausingkirkan semua yang mustahil, apa pun yang tersisa, betapapun mustahilnya, adalah kebenaran.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four

“There have,” said I, “been numerous petty thefts.”
Holmes snorted his contempt.
“This great and sombre stage is set for something more worthy than that,” said he. “It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow

“Das Leben ist unendlich seltsamer als alles, was der menschliche Geist erfinden könnte.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“Murder was so trivial in the stories Harold loved. Dead bodies were plot points, puzzles to be reasoned out. They weren't brothers. Plot points didn't leave behind grieving sisters who couldn't find their shoes.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies."

"You are right," said Holmes demurely: "you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“A three-pint problem”
― Melvyn Small, Holmes: Volume 1

“It would be superfluous to
drive us mad, my dear Watson”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“XVXVI, or 10-5-10-5-1, yielded H-E-H-E-A, which, unless she wanted to show her derisive laughter, made no sense.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Cum mulieribus non est disputandum, as Cicero says.”
― Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

“If canines can be conditioned to salivate over nonexistent food, may not men one day be likewise taught to salivate at the prospect of nonexistent facts?”
― Nicholas Meyer, The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols: Adapted from the Journals of John H. Watson, M.D.

“Mr.Holmes is another sad work unfortunately.”
― Deyth Banger

“Indirect inferences about causation can sometimes be drawn from the absence of variations in a comparative analysis. The lack of variation in certain features against a background of system-level change can suggest that these features are constrained or subject to strong evolutionary pressure against deviation. These are evolution's 'dogs that didn't bark,' immortalized in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes memoir Silver Blaze:
Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.”
― Eric Smith, The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere

“He seems a very amiable person,” said Holmes, laughing. “I am not quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him that my grip was not much more feeble than his own.” As he spoke he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it out again.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes

“And I was glad to be in, with a fire blazing in the hearth, the familiar smell of tobacco in the air and – for all the clutter and chaos with which my friend chose to surround himself – a sense that everything was in its right place.”
― Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk

“He had greeted me warmly, and as I took my place opposite him, I felt the strange sensation that I was awakening from a dream. It was as if the last two years had never happened, that I had never met my beloved Mary, married her and moved to our home in Kensington, purchased with the proceeds of the Agra pearls.”
― Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk

“How bitterly we regretted the route we had chosen and blamed ourselves for what had occurred.”
― Anthony Horowitz

“Only one, I noted, was a little smarter and better fed than the others, his clothes slightly less threadbare, and I wondered what wickedness – pickpocketing, perhaps, or burglary – had furnished him with the means not just to survive but, in his own way, to prosper. He could not have been more than thirteen years old and yet, like all of them, he was already quite grown up. Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.”
― Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk