"You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."
Dr Mortimer, to Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted."
Hugo Baskerville's document, read by Dr Mortimer in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"
Dr Mortimer, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world," said he. "In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"Caught cold, Watson?" said he.
"No, it's this poisonous atmosphere."
"I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it."
"Thick! It is intolerable."
"Open the window, then!"
Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"Where do you think that I have been?"
"A fixture also."
"On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire."
"In spirit?"
"Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men--"
"Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation."
"The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"
Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.
Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track.
From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place.
Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.
Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"It is murder, Watson -- refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.
Watson, on the death of Selden in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!" He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.
From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.
From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him.
From "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions.
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
As I did so I struck against an elderly, deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up, I observed the title of one of them, The Origin of Tree Worship, and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile, who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes.
Watson, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"
"I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty's voice screaming at me out of the abyss."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"
"I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa, and spending some days with the head lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France."
Sherlock Holmes explains his three-year absence, in "The Adventure of the Empty House"