The charlatan is always the pioneer... The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow.

You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty? said he.

The Professor snorted like an angry buffalo. "You really touch the limit," said he. "You enlarge my view of the possible. Cerebral paresis! Mental inertia! Wonderful!"

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

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.