Arthur Conan Doyle

"How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!"

"There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book."

"How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!"

"What a lovely thing a rose is!He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion, said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."

"Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered."

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

"Where there is no imagination there is no horror."

"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."

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt."

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

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me."

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence, the question is what you can make people believe that you have done."

"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.”—Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"