Mystery Quotes

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "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!" ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "Crime is common. Logic is rare." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "I suppose that I am commuting a felony. but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life." ~ The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know." ~ The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits." ~ The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. ~ The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family." ~ The Adventure of the Empty House by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle