ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

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.

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

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.

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.

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.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

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.

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.

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

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

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

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.

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.

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

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

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

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.

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

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

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