Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930,) fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, was a Scottish writer of detective stories and historical romances. He is best known for his creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes—one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction.
Born of Irish ancestry in Edinburgh, Conan Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Early poverty as a young practitioner in the South Seas and as an oculist in London persuaded him into writing. A Study in Scarlet (1887) introduced Sherlock Holmes and his genial friend Dr. John Watson. Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes as the master of diagnostic deduction on medical school professor Dr. Joseph Bell, who observed the minutest details about a patient’s condition.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were serialized in the Strand Magazine 1891–93 and later published as books, as were longer stories such as The Sign of Four (1890) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902.) The Holmes narratives became so well liked that when Conan Doyle tried to put an end to his protagonist, he was obliged in 1903 to revive him.
Conan Doyle’s historical romances Micah Clarke (1887,) The White Company (1890,) Brigadier Gerard (1896,) and Sir Nigel (1906) have at least as much literary merit, and Rodney Stone (1896) is perhaps one of his best novels.
Conan Doyle also wrote works of nonfiction, including military writings such as The Great Boer War (1900) and The War in South Africa (1902,) in addition to the autobiographies Memories and Adventures (1924) and Through the Magic Door (1907.)
After converting from Roman Catholicism to spiritualism, Conan Doyle devoted the rest of his life and career to propagating his new faith in a series of works: The New Revelation (1918,) The Vital Message (1919,) The Wanderings of a Spiritualist (1921,) and History of Spiritualism (1926.) From 1917 to 1925, he lectured on spiritualism all over Europe, Australia, the United States, and Canada.
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Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Evil
The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Theory
The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Britain
I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Idleness
Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Facts
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. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
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
Topics: Mistakes, Facts
There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Police
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
Topics: Libraries
Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Nature, Science
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Life and Living
The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Appearance
All other men are specialists, but his specialty is omniscience.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Learning
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Violence
There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
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.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Knowledge
What can we know?. What are we all?. Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Aspirations
You will, I am sure, agree with me that… if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Books, Reading
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.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Happiness, One Step at a Time
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Crime
Once you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Potential, Truth
There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Facts
Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Topics: Crime
I never guess. It is a shocking habit — destructive to the logical faculty.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
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