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What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.

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
Things
Angels
Beast
Silly
Instinct
Brained
Angel
Peering
Infinite
Beasts
Poor
Aspirations
Half
Aspiration

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The sky was of the deepest blue, with a few white, fleecy clouds drifting lazily across it, and the air was filled with the low drone of insects or with a sudden sharper note as bee or bluefly shot past with its quivering, long-drawn hum, like an insect tuning-fork.
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.
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...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.
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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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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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You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.
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There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.
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No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.
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His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.
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It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?
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No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
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Accounts are not quite settled between us, said she, with a passion that equaled my own. I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first now you must test the other.
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for
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Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.
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I had ... come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.
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It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.
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It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.
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For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
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He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy - those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.
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