Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

"He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone."

"Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another."

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals."

"The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime."

"Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs."

"I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the situation."

"The future was with Fate. The present was our own.~ The Poison Belt"

"As a rule, 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."

"Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting."

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data."

"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 use 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."

"I think that I had better go, Holmes."Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell."

"A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony."