“That bard of the nursery, Mother Goose.”
A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver, 1994
Tag: Quick Quotes (Page 4 of 7)
“A Medical Board – so called because it is composed of bored medicos.”
Herlock Sholmes, “The Case of the Corn-Plaster”, The Complete Casebook of Herlock Shomles, Charles Hamilton, circa 1920
“Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.”
Sherlock Holmes, “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax”, The greatest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, circa 1911
“I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with the case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.”
Sherlock Holmes, “The Cardboard Box”, The Greatest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, circa 1893
I am only halfway through The Complete Casebook of Herlock Sholmes, but you would not believe how many times Sholmes has eaten poor Jotson’s breakfast. And every time is more hilarious than the last. Here is what happened in “The Trunk Mystery”:
“My dear Jotson, we must start at once,” said Herlock Sholmes, as I came down one morning into our sitting-room at Shaker Street.
I glanced towards the breakfast-table.
“My dear Sholmes, I have not yet – “
“We have to call upon Colonel Collywobble without the delay of a moment,” explained Sholmes. “But you know my efficient methods, Jotson. In order to save time I have eaten your breakfast, as well as my own. There is, therefore, nothing to delay us. Come!”
Herlock Sholmes and Dr Jotson, “The Trunk Mystery”, The Complete Casebook of herlock Sholmes, circa 1920
“Mrs Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters, but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.”
Dr Watson, “The Dying Detective”, The Greatest Adventures of Sherlock HOlmes, circa 1913
“Indeed, at one time I suspected [Sholmes had] appendicitis, and offered to remove his appendix; of course, without charging him any fee. Sholmes declined the offer, rather hastily I thought. Perhaps seeing my disappointment, he offered to allow me to remove the appendix from any volume in his bookcase. I explained that this was quite a different matter.”
Dr Jotson, “The disappearance of Dr Jotson”, The Complete Casebook of Herlock Sholmes, circa 1920
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.”
Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, 1994
“I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,” said [Sherlock Holmes]. “How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?”
“Strange – remarkable,” I suggested.
He shook his head at my definition.
“There is surely something more than that,” said he; “some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you cast your mind back to some of those narrative with which you have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has been deepened into the criminal. Think of that little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which led straight to a murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on alert.”
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, “Wisteria Lodge”, The Greatest Adventures of Sherlock HOlmes, circa 1908
“The heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion)”
Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, 1994