Doyle Quotes

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

You see, but you do not observe.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.

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

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

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.

People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.

It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible.

Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.

Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi stimul ac nummos contemplar in arca. (The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house I contemplate the coins in my strong-box.)

There are no safe choices. Only other choices.

Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he.

Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.

When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

I will not stay, not ever again - in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' 'The dog did nothing in the night-time.' 'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.

I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.

To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.

The game is afoot.

There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.

Do you ever feel that way?" "Lonely?" I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it." He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have. "Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last. "What?" "Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson.

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

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because you're doing it right.

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. 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.

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.

My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

Do you think they missed him terribly when he fell? Did God cry over his lost angel, I wonder?

This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been.

If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.

There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.

When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.

My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.

I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.

How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me.

Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.

In every end, there is also a beginning.

I changed the world; the world changed me. Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected.

I want to ask him if it’s possible that a girl can be born unlovable, or does she just become that way?

We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.

You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.

What one man can invent, another can discover.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.

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.

I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

I wanted to end the world, but I'll settle for ending yours.

WE CAN DO HARD THINGS.

It's quite exciting," said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.

Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.

Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.

I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.

What happens if your choice is misguided?' I ask, softly. Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. 'You must try to correct it.' 'But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?' There's a sad sympathy in Miss Moore's catlike eyes as she regards my painting again. She paints the thinnest sliver of shadow along the bottom of the apple, bringing it fully to life. 'Then you must find a way to live with it.

No woman on earth doesn’t give a fuck—no woman is that cool—she’s just hidden her fire. Likely, it’s burning her up.

I'm sorry, Gemma. But we can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.

It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one...one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann? Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were--damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story remember? A tragedy. They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. With what can't be. There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?

There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops.

Everything comes in circles. [...] The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.

I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped.

You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it's hard. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don't avoid the pain. You need it. It's meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you'll burn to get your work done on this earth.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us.

Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because you're doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.

I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?

But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?...aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?

People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don’t need help.

Do no harm, but take no shit.

People who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witness. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpful vigil to our pain.

No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.

When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world's expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.

They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.

As a rule, 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.

How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.

How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.

What do you feel? I’ve never been asked this question once. None of us has. We aren’t supposed to feel. We’re British.

What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "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.

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

I followed you.' I saw no one.' That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.

From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.

Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see.

Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.

Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.

There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.

A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer--Gem-ma, Gem-ma--and then the leaves bend down and trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.

May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.

My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

It's possible to pretend I'm someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.

Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.

Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.

Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire. A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

Be careful with the stories you tell about yourself".

There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.

Privilege is being born on third base. Ignorant privilege is thinking you’re there because you hit a triple. Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren’t waiting patiently enough.

Women who have power are always feared.

But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.

Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses: "1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil. 2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil. 3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil. 4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble. 5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. 6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them. 7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound. 8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic. 9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. 10. Plays the violin well. 11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman. 12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

We are all unkind from time to time. We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds.

presume nothing

A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you're abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful, Charlotte, careful of the wind you choose.

We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind." "Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact. ~ Sherlock Holmes

Did God ever cry over his lost angel, I wonder?

Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.

You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!" It was worth a wound -- it was worth many wounds -- to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

Tish is sensitive, and that is her superpower. The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine. The opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s no badge of honor.

Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.

War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so.

The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. We need to let go of the lie that it's supposed to be.

Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore... and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more...

To each his own magic.

Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.

Beneath the skin, there is fear. Pain. Remorse. Yearning. Desire. A fierce longing for power. All of this. We are joined. It is as if we live in the center of a great storm. Around us the world of the realms revolves like a giant kaleidoscope, images refracted again and again. So many worlds! So much to know.

I'm not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, 'For the same reason I laugh so often--because I'm paying attention.' I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide.

There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.

What a lovely thing a rose is!" He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "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 all 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.

You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.

I refuse to let the past find me here.

Anything is better than stagnation.

The only thing that was every wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me.

A broken family is a family in which any member must break herself into pieces to fit in. A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free.

I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

I'm sorry,' he says simply. 'People make mistakes, Gemma. We take the wrong action for the right reasons, and the right action for the wrong reasons.

Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.

Because you can't keep up the illusion forever," I say. "No one has that much magic.

There is beauty everywhere; even in the dark, there is light, and that is the rarest kind of all.

The braver I am, the luckier I get.

I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.

What I Know: 1. What you don't know, you're not supposed to know yet. 2. More will be revealed. 3 Crisis means to sift. Let it all fall away and you'll be left with what matters. 4.What matters most cannot be taken away. 5. Just do the next right thing one thing at a time. That'll take you all the way home.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” - Sherlock Homes

By George!" cried the inspector. "How did you ever see that?" Because I looked for it.

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen.... And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.

If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.

What if pain - like love - is just a place brave people visit?

There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

I have met my self and I am going to care for her fiercely.

We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist. What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live. If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

The night's chilly breath tickles up my neck and finds my ear, whispering secrets only the wind knows.

When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

Because it is morning, it is morning, and there is so much to see.

Wir sind gewohnt dass die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen. (Goethe)—We are used to see that Man mocks what he never comprehends.

But...you could have whatever you wished." "Exactly," he says, nuzzling my neck. "But," I say, "you could turn stones to rubies or ride in a fine gentleman's carriage." Kartik puts his hands on either side of my face. "To each his own magic," he says and kisses me again.

My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.

A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter

We forgot how to know when we learned how to please.

Hard work is important. So are play and nonproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest.

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

Maybe I am looking at you,’ he whispered. 'Maybe I always have been.

You are here to decide if your life, relationships and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right - perhaps even the duty - to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?" "No, indeed!" "You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged." "My dear fellow! I congrat-" "To Milverton's housemaid." "My dear Holmes!" "I wanted information, Watson.

But forgiveness...I'll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own...bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different

I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’ ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment. ‘Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter that night.

There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words 'I have something to tell you,' a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.

It’s okay to feel all of the stuff you’re feeling. You’re just becoming human again. You’re not doing life wrong; you’re doing it right. If there’s any secret you’re missing, it’s that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you’re doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes.” I did not know, before that woman told me, that all feelings were for feeling. I did not know that I was supposed to feel everything. I thought I was supposed to feel happy. I thought that happy was for feeling and that pain was for fixing and numbing and deflecting and hiding and ignoring. I thought that when life got hard, it was because I had gone wrong somewhere. I thought that pain was weakness and that I was supposed to suck it up. But the thing was that the more I sucked it up, the more food and booze I had to suck down.

That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth traveled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. ‘You appear to be astonished,’ he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. ‘Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.’ ‘To forget it!’ ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘I consider that a man’s brain is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. 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.’ ‘But the Solar System!’ I protested. ‘What the deuce is it to me?’ he interrupted impatiently: ‘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.

we all seem to function in the exact same way: We hurt people, and we are hurt by people. We feel left out, envious, not good enough, sick, and tired. We have unrealized dreams and deep regrets. We are certain that we were meant for more and that we don’t even deserve what we have. We feel ecstatic and then numb. We wish our parents had done better by us. We wish we could do better by our children. We betray and we are betrayed. We lie and we are lied to. We say good-bye to animals, to places, to people we cannot live without. We are so afraid of dying. Also: of living. We have fallen in love and out of love, and people have fallen in love and out of love with us. We wonder if what happened to us that night will mean we can never be touched again without fear. We live with rage bubbling. We are sweaty, bloated, gassy, oily. We love our children, we long for children, we do not want children. We are at war with our bodies, our minds, our souls. We are at war with one another. We wish we’d said all those things while they were still here. They’re still here, and we’re still not saying those things. We know we won’t. We don’t understand ourselves. We don’t understand why we hurt those we love. We want to be forgiven. We cannot forgive. We don’t understand God. We believe. We absolutely do not believe. We are lonely. We want to be left alone. We want to belong. We want to be loved. We want to be loved. We want to be loved.