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If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.

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
Failure
Known
Years
Men
Life
Sherlock
Holmes
Invented
Considered

More quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper. ~ Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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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It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I think that I had better go, Holmes. Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination where there is no imagination there is no horror.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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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