Quote

Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.

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
Men
Practice
Criminal
Lost
Agency
School
Enterprise
Degenerating
Seems
Criminals
Boarding
Young
Schools
Recovering
Littles
Lead
Pencils
Little
Advice
Ladies
Giving
Least
Originality

More quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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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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You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.
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Anything seems commonplace, once explained.
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Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.
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If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.
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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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You know my methods. Apply them.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
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All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.
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Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.
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A trusty comrade is always of use and a chronicler still more so.
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It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star.
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Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.
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The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.
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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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Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war.
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Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
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I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.
Arthur Conan Doyle