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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.

Arthur Conan Doyle

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Arthur Conan Doyle
Age: 71 †
Born: 1859
Born: May 22
Died: 1930
Died: July 7
Crime Writer
Essayist
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Sir A. Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan
Sir Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Really
Prove
Proves
Crime
Corny
Literature
Commonplace
Face
Crimes
Faces
Bizarre
Less
Identify
Featureless
Difficult
Mysterious
Puzzling
Thing
Rule
Holmes

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So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.
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If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.
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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.
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A change of work is the best rest.
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His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure--all the more intense for being held tightly in--his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.
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If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.
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The soul is swayed by the waters.
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Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.
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I suppose I shall have to compound a felony as usual.
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Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' The dog did nothing in the night-time.' That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.
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Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.
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While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.
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So tomorrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate.
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An absence of antecedents and of relatives is sometimes an aid rather than an impediment to social advancement . . .
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Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.
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It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for
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There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit.
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The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.
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The less experienced a doctor is, the higher are his notions of professional dignity . . .
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