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[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

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
Profession
Bane
Theory
Premature
Upon
Insufficient
Form
Holmes
Theories
Temptation
Observation
Data
Sherlock

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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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…but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.
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Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.
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We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.
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Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.
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Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!
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Nature is the true revelation of the Deity to man. The nearest green field is the inspired page from which you may read all that it is needful for you to know.
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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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It seems very strange ... that in the course of the world's history so obvious an improvement should never have been adopted. ... The next generation of Britishers would be the better for having had this extra hour of daylight in their childhood.
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Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil
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It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed that snakes have talked that women have been turned into salt that rods have brought water out of rocks.
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The approach to the offices of Girdlestone and Co. was not a very dignified one, nor would the uninitiated who traversed it form any conception of the commercial prosperity of the firm in question.
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Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.
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The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.
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The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife.
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You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you? For me, said Sherlock Holmes, there still remains the cocaine bottle.
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I'm not a psychopath, I'm a fully functioning sociopath. Do your research.
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I must apologize for calling so late, said he, and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.
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The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
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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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