The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes quotes

“I cannot think how I came to overlook it,” said the Inspector, with an expression of annoyance.

“It was invisible, buried in the mud. I only saw it because I was looking for it.”

“What! You expected to find it?”

“At least you have his assurance that your horse will run,” said I.

“Yes, I have his assurance,” said the Colonel, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I should prefer to have the horse.”

I was about to make some reply in defence of my friend when he entered the room again.

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

“The dog did nothing in the nighttime.”

“The dog did nothing in the nighttime.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Four days later Holmes and I were again in the train, bound for Winchester to see the race for the Wessex Cup. Colonel Ross met us by appointment outside the station, and we drove in his drag to the course beyond the town.

If I remember right, he stumbled over a heap of stones, looked up at the stars, and so on. But I have been seated quietly in my chair, and what clues can I have given you?”

“You do yourself an injustice. The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions, and yours are faithful servants.”

“Do you mean to say that you read my train of thoughts from my features?”

He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door.

“We can talk it over more comfortably at home,” said he. “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

Holmes and I followed them down the lane, and my friend plucked at my sleeve as we came out.

Not another word did he say of the case until late that night, when he was turning away, with his lighted candle, for his bedroom.

“Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”

“These relics have a history then?”

“So much so that they are history.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t think you need alarm yourself,” said I. “

I have usually found that there was method in his madness.

”

“

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital.

Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.

“Elementary,” said he. “

It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbor, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction.

The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the …

“ ‘ “So I have,” said he, and it was awful to hear the tones that he said it in.

He had a very dark, fearsome face, and a gleam in his eyes that comes back to me in my dreams.

His hair and whiskers were shot with gray, and his face was all crinkled and puckered like a withered apple.

He was all right, as far as money went, but in his deposit he had given her what looked like a bad florin.

She showed it to me, Watson, and it was an Indian rupee.

“So now, my dear fellow, you see exactly how we stand and why it is I want you.

“

It’s every man’s business to see justice done.

”

“

It was a just providence that killed him.

But, mind you this, that if I had knocked his brains out, as it was in my heart to do, he would have had no more than his due from my hands.

What use was it for me, a wretched cripple, to go back to England or to make myself known to my old comrades? Even my wish for revenge would not make me do that.

I had rather that Nancy and my old pals should think of Harry Wood as having died with a straight back, than see him living and crawling with a stick like a chimpanzee.

They never doubted that I was dead, and I meant that they never should. I heard that Barclay had married Nancy, and that he was rising rapidly in the regiment, but even that did not make me speak.

“A fraudulent imitation, Watson, though I should hardly dare to hint as much to our specialist.

It is a very easy complaint to imitate. I have done it myself.

”

Of course, if they had been merely after plunder they would at least have made some attempt to search for it.

Besides, I can read in a man’s eye when it is his own skin that he is frightened for.

It is inconceivable that this fellow could have made two such vindictive enemies as these appear to be without knowing of it.

But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

”

“My dear Watson,” said he, “

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.

When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.”

“

The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men.

He’s always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It’s six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.”

“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy.

He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.

Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one.

“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction.

If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived.

But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.

“A very commonplace little murder,” said he. “You’ve got something better, I fancy.

You are the stormy petrel of crime, Watson.

What is it?”

“

A cold hand seemed to close round my heart.

Someone, then, was in that room where my precious treaty lay upon the table. I ran frantically up the stair and along the passage. There was no one in the corridors, Mr. Holmes. There was no one in the room.

“Thank you. I have no doubt I can get details from Forbes.

The authorities are excellent at amassing facts, though they do not always use them to advantage.

What a lovely thing a rose is!”

“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in 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.

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.

”

“

Lighthouses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wise, better England of the future.

I suppose that man Phelps does not drink?”

“Well, we have several, but we can only test their value by further inquiry.

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

Now this is not purposeless. Who is it who profits by it? There is the French ambassador, there is the Russian, there is whoever might sell it to either of these, and there is Lord Holdhurst.”

“

Misfortunes never come single,

” said Phelps, smiling, though it was evident that his adventure had somewhat shaken him.

“There! there!” said Holmes, soothing, patting him upon the shoulder. “

It was too bad to spring it on you like this, but Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.

”

“The principal difficulty in your case,” remarked Holmes, in his didactic fashion, “lay in the fact of there being too much evidence.

What was vital was overlaid and hidden by what was irrelevant.

Of all the facts which were presented to us we had to pick just those which we deemed to be essential, and then piece them together in their order, so as to reconstruct this very remarkable chain of events.

“It may be so,” answered Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. “

I can only say for certain that Mr. Joseph Harrison is a gentleman to whose mercy I should be extremely unwilling to trust.

”

“

He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.

He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.

“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.

He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.

He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized.

You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.

My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill.

But at last he made a trip—only a little, little trip—but it was more than he could afford when I was so close upon him.

“ ‘Well, well,’ said he, at last. ‘It seems a pity, but I have done what I could. I know every move of your game. You can do nothing before Monday. It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes.

You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.

If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.’

“That was my singular interview with Professor Moriarty. I confess that it left an unpleasant effect upon my mind.

His soft, precise fashion of speech leaves a conviction of sincerity which a mere bully could not produce.

Of course, you will say: ‘Why not take police precautions against him?’ The reason is that I am well convinced that it is from his agents the blow will fall. I have the best proofs that it would be so.”