I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
“A Scandal in Bohemia” [Holmes] (1891)
Full text. Sometimes conflated with "No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit -- destructive to the logical faculty." from The Sign of the Four.
Quotations by:
Doyle, Arthur Conan
It was one Sunday evening early in September of the year 1903 that I received one of Holmes’s laconic messages: “Come at once if convenient — if inconvenient come all the same. S.H.'”
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
“The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” Strand Magazine (Mar 1923)
(Source)
Reprinted in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927).
I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the moment of action to enter into long and complex explanations.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
“The Dancing Men” [Sherlock Holmes], The Strand Magazine (Dec 1903)
(Source)
Reprinted as "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, ch. 3 (1905).
A man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
“The Five Orange Pips,” The Strand (Nov 1891)
(Source)
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
The Hound of the Baskervilles, ch. 3 [Holmes] (1901-02)
(Source)
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
The Sign of Four, ch. 6, (Sherlock Holmes) (1889)
When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hopes hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go for a good spin down the road, without thought of anything but the ride you are taking.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
In The American Bee Keeper (May 1895)
Got up late and would have liked to have got up later, which is a sad moral state to be in.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
Journal of Arctic voyage (11 Jul 1880)
(Source)
Blowing a gale all day. Nothing to do and we did it.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
Journal of Arctic voyage (19 Jul 1880)
(Source)