Best quotes from A Study in Scarlet

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.

To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.

Oh! A mystery is it?" I cried, rubbing my hands. "This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' you know.

There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. And now for lunch, and then for Norman Neruda. Her attack and her bowing are splendid.

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

"It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.

On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.

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.

There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.

So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.

Leaning back in the cab, this amateur bloodhound carolled away like a lark while I meditated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind.

I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence.

I have seen death in many forms, but never has it appeared to me in a more fearsome aspect than in that dark grimy apartment, which looked out upon one of the main arteries of suburban London.

Read it up – you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.

Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

After the lapse of time that has passed since their crime, it was impossible for me to secure a conviction against them in any court. I knew of their guilt though, and I determined that I should be judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. You'd have done the same, if you have any manhood in you, if you had been in my place.

Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.