I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

Quid quid movetur ab alio movetur(nothing moves without having been moved).

By the way, a question is sometimes raised, whether the moral choice or the actions have most to do with Virtue, since it consists in both: it is plain that the perfection of virtuous action requires both: but for the actions many things are required, and the greater and more numerous they are the more.

All that is done on compulsion is bitterness to the soul.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes; chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

And, generally speaking, all things are good which men deliberately choose to do;

For it is about our actions that we deliberate and inquire, and all our actions have a contingent character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity.

The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.

Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!

I think Mr. Holmes had not quite got over his illness yet. He's been behaving very queerly, and he is very much excited." "I don't think you need alarm yourself," said I. "I have usually found that there was method in his madness." "Some folks might say there was madness in his method," muttered the Inspector.

In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.