There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

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.

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

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

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

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

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

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.

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.

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

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

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.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.