I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

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

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

A trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.

There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

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 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.

To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

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.

Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.

We can't command our love, but we can our actions.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

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

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. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.