"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." ~ The Red-Headed League
"I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it." ~ The Adventure of the Priory School
"I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make." ~ The Valley of Fear
Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears. ~ The Valley of Fear
"It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits." ~ The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
"I suppose that I am commuting a felony. but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life." ~ The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
"Ah, me! it's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all." ~ The Adventure of the Speckled Band
"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge." ~ The Adventure of the Speckled Band
"The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
"Crime is common. Logic is rare." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
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