Arthur Conan Doyle (Writer)

The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.

These pictures are not occult, but they are psychic because everything that emanates from the human spirit or human brain is psychic. It is not supernatural; nothing is. It is preternatural in the sense that it is not known to our ordinary senses. It is the effect of the joining on the one hand of imagination, and on the other hand of some power of materialization. The imagination, I may say, comes from me — the materializing power from elsewhere.

— Arthur Conan Doyle power

I can tell you that it is no game for children, and I will confess that, in spite of my nine campaigns, I felt myself turn pale when the first ball flashed past me.

— Arthur Conan Doyle children

You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.

— Arthur Conan Doyle life

STEEL TRUE BLADE STRAIGHT

— Arthur Conan Doyle true

The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.

— Arthur Conan Doyle knowledge

When you look closely it is a question whether that which is a wrong to the present community may not prove to have been a right to the interests of posterity. That sounds a little foggy; but I will make my meaning more clear when I say that I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply into the ultimate effect.

— Arthur Conan Doyle men

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

— Arthur Conan Doyle love

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 instincts of beasts.

— Arthur Conan Doyle angels

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

— Arthur Conan Doyle

We can't command our love, but we can our actions.

— Arthur Conan Doyle love

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

— Arthur Conan Doyle

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

— Arthur Conan Doyle truth

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

— Arthur Conan Doyle work

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

— Arthur Conan Doyle imagination

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

— Arthur Conan Doyle love

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

— Arthur Conan Doyle man

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

— Arthur Conan Doyle children

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

— Arthur Conan Doyle men

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

— Arthur Conan Doyle truth

Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.

— Arthur Conan Doyle facts

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

— Arthur Conan Doyle logic

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

— Arthur Conan Doyle beautiful

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

— Arthur Conan Doyle life

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

— Arthur Conan Doyle man

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

— Arthur Conan Doyle rain

There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.

— Arthur Conan Doyle man

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.

— Arthur Conan Doyle knowledge

There’s a light in a woman’s eyes that speaks louder than words.

— Arthur Conan Doyle words

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