"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know."

Sherlock Holmes to James Ryder: The Blue Carbuncle

"I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: A Study in Scarlet

"I have been beaten four times - three times by men and once by a woman."

Sherlock Holmes to John Openshaw: The Five Orange Pips

"I have a turn both for observation and for deduction."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: A Study in Scarlet

"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. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: The Sign of Four

"I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather - that is, when the fit is on me, for I can be spry enough at times."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: A Study in Scarlet

"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."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: The Man with the Twisted Lip

"No,no; I never guess. It is a shocking habit - destructive to the logical faculty."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: The Sign of Four

"I know my dear Watson, that you share my love all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life."

The Red-Headed League

"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."

The Five Orange Pips

"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."

The Five Orange Pips

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last."

The Adventure of The Red Circle

"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. A fool takes in all the lumber or every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. 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."

A Study in Scarlet

"We can but try."

The Adventure of The Creeping Man

"What one man can invent, another can discover."

The Adventure of The Dancing Men

"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."

The Greek Interpreter

"Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just."

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

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

Silver Blaze

"One drawback of an active mind is that one can always conceive alternate explanations which would make our scent a false one."

The Problem of Thor Bridge

"Mediocrity know nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius."

The Valley of Fear

"What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

The Adventure of The Cardboard Box

"Work is the best antidote to sorrow."

The Adventure of The Empty House

"It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you."

The Final Problem

"Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed."

The Hound of the Baskervilles

"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent."

A Case of Identity

"Stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have."

His Last Bow

"The work is its own reward."

The Adventure of The Norwood Builder

"But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them."

The Adventure of The Three Gables

"I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all."

The Man with the Twisted Lip

"I have taken to living by my wits."

The Musgrave Ritual

"A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones."

The Adventure of The Creeping Man

"I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done."

The Adventure of The Devil's Foot

"The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning."

The Sign of Four

"I think that there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge."

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

"When a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it."

The Adventure of The Priory School

"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."

The Adventure of the Abbey Grange

"There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible."

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge