Quotes about Mystery

A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.

I don't take much stock of detectives in novels - chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not business.

How long is this to last? asked the inspector finally. And what is it we are watching for? I have no more notion than you how long it is to last, Holmes answered with some asperity. If criminals would always schedule their movements like railway trains, it would certainly be more convenient for all of us.

The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns.

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.

Das Leben ist unendlich seltsamer als alles, was der menschliche Geist erfinden könnte.

I believe you are a wizard, Mr. Holmes.

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.

His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.

Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment. "The goose, Mr. Holmes! The goose, sir!" he gasped. "Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off through the kitchen window?" Holmes twisted himself round upon the sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face.

You then went to the vicarage, waited outside it for some time, and finally returned to your cottage." "How do you know that?" "I followed you." "I saw no one." "That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.