The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The public seemed appreciative and desirous of more, so that from that date, thirty-nine years ago, they have been produced in a broken series which now contains no fewer than fifty-six stories, republished in The Adventures, The Memoirs, The Return, and His Last Bow, and there remain these twelve published during the last few years which are here produced under the title of The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s heroes still may strut, Dickens’s delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray’s worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers.

“This is Baker Street, not Harley Street,” said he. “But why do you say so?”

To accept such praise was to lower one’s own standards

Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls

“Who knows, Watson? Woman’s heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male.

But in any case I wish you to understand once for all that I love him and that he loves me, and that the opinion of all the world is no more to me than the twitter of those birds outside the window.

She is not in her senses. She is madly in love. She has been told all about him. She cares nothing.”
“Told about the murder?”
“Yes.”
“My Lord, she must have a nerve!”
“She puts them all down as slanders.”

That is no answer. If a man has a hobby he follows it up, whatever his other pursuits may be.

He pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone