Sourced and curated.

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

The Adventure of the Naval Treaty · 1893

★ 6.1

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

The Sign of the Four · 1890

★ 5.4

Alcohol is like love...The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

The Long Goodbye · 1953

★ 5.2

It is cocaine...a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?

The Sign of Four · 1890

★ 4.5

You see, but you do not observe.

A Scandal in Bohemia · 1891

★ 4.0

It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.

The Red-Headed League · 1891

★ 3.9

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all of the evidence. It biases the judgement.

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 3.7

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

A Case of Identity · 1891

★ 3.7

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask · 1930

★ 3.7

What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 3.6

I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 3.6

He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask · 1930

★ 3.6

I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

The Big Sleep · 1939

★ 3.6

A big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup.

1949

★ 3.6

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

1940

★ 3.5

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.

With method and logic one can accomplish anything!

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 2.7

Short story · Detective fiction

Agatha Christie

The Kidnapped Prime Minister · 1924

★ 2.1

It is completely unimportant... That is why it is so interesting.

Agatha Christie

The Murder of Rogers Ackroyd · 1926

★ 2.1

There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 2.0

That's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask · 1930

★ 1.9

Law is where you buy it in this town.

Farewell, My Lovely · 1940

★ 1.9

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Douglas Adams

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul · 1988

★ 1.9

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."

Douglas Adams

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul · 1988

★ 1.9

It was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.

Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency · 1987

★ 1.8

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done.

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 1.2

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

A Study in Scarlet · 1887

★ 1.2

The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches · 1892

★ 1.2

We are dealing with an exceptionally astute and dangerous man...one of the most unscrupulous rascals that Australia has ever evolved—and for a young country it has turned out some very finished types.