Life is short and with an ever growing to-read list it's difficult to come back to a book and give it a second reading but I did just that with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It's a real pleasure to read. With this second reading I kept a highlighter to hand and picked off my favourite quotes from the book, which you can found below:
"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."
"My dear doctor, pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you..."
"I never guess. It is a shocking habit – destructive to the logical faculty."
"I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?"
"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule."
"You will not apply my precept. How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth?"
"How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!"
"No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. I am going to smoke and to think over this queer business to which my far client has introduced us."
"... 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 do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."
"... white men out there [in India] feel their hearts warm to each other as they never do here at home."
"... love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement."
"'You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.' 'Frequently.' 'How often?' 'Well, some hundreds of times.' 'Then how many are there?' 'How many! I don't know.' 'Quite so. You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.'"
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."
"Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details."
"I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect."
"My dear Doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk."
"You have a grand gift of silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion."
"I had come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it is always to reason from insufficient data."
"... I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to under-estimate oneself is as much a departure from the truth as to exaggerate one's own powers."
