If you knew particularly what to do, it were not a spiritual exercise.

I verily judge, we know not how much may be had in this life: there is yet something beyond all we see, that seeking would light upon.

You don't push the button that says "Now I will write something that resonates in time." You don't know. It's what happens after a play is finished.

Embrace relational uncertainty. It's called romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It's called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It's called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It's called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It's called revelation.

Even if our contact with eternal beings is slight, none the less because of its surpassing value this knowledge is a greater pleasure than our knowledge of everything around us.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men. He's always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It's six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.

We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.

It is not easy to express the inexpressible

Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do." This was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him?

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper, and old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal.