Hound Of The Baskervilles Quotes

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

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

presume nothing

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

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

Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read, somehow transmuted and transformed into me. Alice in Wonderland. the Magic Faraway Tree. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Book of Job. Bleak House. Wuthering Heights. The Complete Poems of W H Auden. The Tale of Mr Tod. Howard''s End. What a strange person I must be. But if the books I have read have helped to form me, then probably nobody else who ever lived has read exactly the same books, all the same books and only the same books as me. So just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.

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

He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.

It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.

The past and the present are within my field of inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.

Watson: "You may be right." Holmes: "The probability lies in that direction.

He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. but I did - some little distance off, but fresh and clear" "Footprints?" "Footprints." "A man's or a woman's?" Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered: "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of s gigantic hound!

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild and menacing.

The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.

Kate sat at her desk. Grendel sprawled by her feet, an enormous black monstrosity that had more in common with the hound of the Baskervilles than with any poodle I had ever seen.

A strong wind sang sadly as it bent the trees in front of the Hall. A half moon shone through the dark, flying clouds on to the wild and empty moor.

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.

To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed, The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.

Some people without possesing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it

...Recognising, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--" "Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" Asked Holmes, with some asperity. "To the man of precised, scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly." "Then had you not better consult him?" "I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--" "Just a little," said Holmes.

You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" “His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. "Well?" said he. "Do you not find it interesting?" "To a collector of fairy-tales.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes...was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night.

His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh.

The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.

Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.

I must thank you,' said Sherlock Holmes, 'for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.

My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic.

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

Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.

WATSON: Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.      HOLMES: if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.

It is not what we know, but what we can prove.

It all begins with your great-grandfather, Sir Hugo Baskerville, who was a right bastard, and no denying.

He foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.

Yes, the setting (Dartmoor) is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men. Sherlock Holmes

Finding a proper husband is rather like selecting a hound. They all have more bark than bite, my girl. One day you'll look across the breakfast table and realize the only option is obedience training. -Grandmamma Holmes

The smell nearly distracted me from my task, but no-I remained steadfast. Stiff upper lip, Watson! Action! Answers! THEN bacon.

THE POWER OF detaching his mind at will.

Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual.

Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep.

It is the reader who comes to complete the work and to close, albeit temporarily, the world that it opens, and the reader does this in a different way every time.

We're at close grips at last," said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. "What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel.

I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.

Alcuni individui, pur senza possedere il genio, hanno il notevole potere di stimolarlo.

In certi momenti gli occhi di una donna si riempiono di una luce assai più eloquente di un fiume di parole.

I confess that I covet your skull.

The Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a detective story which means that there are clues and Red Herrings.

To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear you from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.

and your presence may be of assistance to me. 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.

Well, Watson, what do you make of it?' Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation. 'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.' 'I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me', said he.

The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one’s soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but on the other hand you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their grey stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door, fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that the presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy.

[…] there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by means of our images and our words. Denying oneself this work of completion in the name of some hypothetical fidelity to the work is bound to fail: we can indeed reject filling these gaps in a conscious way, but we cannot prevent our unconscious from finishing the work, according to its priorities and those of the era in which it was written.

To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the furrows of brown, with blossoms and one time we took a siding to wait for 98 and I ran out there like the hound of the Baskervilles and got me a few old prunes not longer fitten to eat - the propietor seeing me, trainman running guiltily back to engine with a stolen prune, always I was running, always was running, running to throw switches, running in my sleep and running now - happy.

A great number of elements in the characters’ lives, both psychic and factual, are not communicated to us. […] These characters, I believe, enjoy a much greater autonomy than we usually think, and are able to take initiatives unknown both to the writer and the reader. When characters have their own will, their own autonomy, it gives the literary universe a greater internal mobility; it also makes the texts through which we view this world all the more open and incomplete.

You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?” “A fixture also.” “On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire.” “In spirit?” “Exactly. My body has remained in this arm-chair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco.

As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it.

And he has guns and dogs that would make the Hound of Baskervilles seem like a bleeding Pekinese.

Ciò che è noto racchiude in sé meno terrore di ciò che è soltanto sussurrato e fantasticato

when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life,

Is Disease a Reversion?

No, it's this poisonous atmosphere." "I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it.

An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours.

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

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

By the way, I don’t suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?

[Holmes] burst into one of his rare fits of laughter… I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to someone.

They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains

either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places.

My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt of my revolver, and, walking swiftly up the door, I looked in.

Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us.

I had always known that vengeance would be sweet, but I had never hoped for the contentment of soul which now possessed me.

Ich erinnerte mich, wie der Baronet mir erzählt hatte, dass

Holmes glanced at me and raised his eyebrows sardonically. “With two such men as yourself and Lestrade upon the ground, there will not be much for a third party to find out,” he said.

But I have seen more than that,’ said he, ‘for Hugo Baskerville passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.

So, here’s how it’s going to be,” she continues. “The doctor says I’ve only got a few months to live.” Tucker’s mouth flies open and panic distorts her features. She rises slowly from the couch and stumbles toward the front door. Opening it, she goes into Ella’s front yard. Ella makes a move to go after her when suddenly she hears a cry from outside that makes her blood turn cold. It sounds as if someone has taken the scream of a screech owl and the howl of a coyote and mixed them in hell. Ella has a memory of reading The Hound of the Baskervilles as a child and trying to imagine what the eerie howl of the hound must have sounded like. Now she is certain she knows what it sounded like and why even the intrepid Sherlock Holmes was unnerved upon hearing it.

Populus me sibilat at mihi plaudo Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplor in arca. (The public hisses at me, but I applaud myself in my own house, and simultaneously contemplate the money in my chest.)

(...) em geral você subestimou suas próprias aptidões. É possível que você não seja em si mesmo luminoso, mas é um condutor de luz. Algumas pessoas, sem possuir gênio, têm o notável poder de estimulá-lo.

Our relationship with literary characters, at least to those that exercise a certain attraction over us, rests in fact on a denial. We know perfectly well, on a conscious level, that these characters “do not exist,” or in any case do not exist in the same way as do the inhabitants of the real world. But things manifest in an entirely different way on the unconscious level, which is interested not in the ontological differences between worlds but in the effect they produce on the psyche. Every psychoanalyst knows how deeply a subject can be influenced, and even shaped, sometimes to the point of tragedy, by a fictional character and the sense of identification it gives rise to. This remark must first of all be understood as a reminder that we ourselves are usually fictional characters for other people […]

[…] a given text may seem fictional or actual depending on the context in which we encounter it. The same is true for oral performances. [Thomas] Pavel takes the example of a theatrical scene wherein an actor mimics the gestures of a priest and pretends to bless the audience. There is nothing effective about this blessing in most contexts, but it can become effective in certain circumstances: imagine, for example, a dictatorship in which religion is banned and in which a theater audience, having kept the old faith, experiences the actor’s gesture as authentic, transforming this fictional scene in a scene of real life.

I have no data yet. 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. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?

He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson.

I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial.

You saved my life, Holmes,' said the baronet. 'We all make mistakes,' said Holmes. 'Are you strong enough to stand?' 'Give me another mouthful of that brandy, and I shall be able to stand anything.' He drank the bottle and collapsed. He tried to stagger to his feet and passed out, but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock. He wouldn't eat it.

At the same moment the convict screamed out a curse at us and hurled a rock which splintered up against the boulder which had sheltered us. I caught one glimpse of his short, squat, strongly built figure as he sprang to his feet and turned to run. -- A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away.

I was afraid of anyone in a costume. A trip to see Santa might as well have been a trip to sit on Hitler's lap for all the trauma it would cause me. Once, when I was four, my mother and I were in a Sears and someone wearing an enormous Easter Bunny costume headed my way to present me with a chocolate Easter egg. I was petrified by this nightmarish six-foot-tall bipedal pink fake-fur monster with human-sized arms and legs and a soulless, impassive face heading toward me. It waved halfheartedly as it held a piece of candy out in an evil attempt to lure me into its clutches. Fearing for my life, I pulled open the bottom drawer of a display case and stuck my head inside, the same way an ostrich buries its head in the sand. This caused much hilarity among the surrounding adults, and the chorus of grown-up laughter I heard echoing from within that drawer only added to the horror of the moment. Over the next several years, I would run away in terror from a guy in a gorilla suit whose job it was to wave customers into a car wash, a giant Uncle Sam on stilts, a midget dressed like a leprechaun, an astronaut, the Detroit Tigers mascot, Ronald McDonald, Big Bird, Bozo the Clown, and every Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Chip and Dale, Uncle Scrooge, and Goofy who walked the streets at Disneyland. Add to this an irrational fear of small dogs that saw me on more than one occasion fleeing in terror from our neighbor's four-inch-high miniature dachschund as if I were being chased by the Hound of the Baskervilles and a chronic case of germ phobia, and it's pretty apparent that I was--what some of the less politically correct among us might call--a first-class pussy.

We’ve traded quite a bit of information over the years,” Means said. “I worked out of Mason City for six years, so we got to know each other. He’s sort of a hound when it comes to women.” “Not sort of,” Lucas said. “He’s the fuckin’ Hound of the Baskervilles when it comes to women. Every time he gets around my daughter, I make sure I’ve got my gun.

All the creatures seemed happy to be at the library. The Headless Horseman gave horsey rides and the kids lined up! Someone brought out a ball and played fetch with the Hound of the Baskervilles. Dracula told jokes. The giant gently picked up some kids and lifted them high in the air. Everyone was enjoying the fun. The characters didn’t seem so scary now! Virginia Creeper’s happy smile suddenly changed to a worried frown when she looked out the window and saw the seniors’ book club coming up the walk. “Oh my,” said Ms. Creeper, “I almost forgot. It’s time for the book club! They can’t see this! It will give the seniors such a fright.” “Go and tidy up while I stall them at the door!” the librarian told Miss Smith. Virginia Creeper blocked the impatient readers from entering while Miss Smith ran around in a tizzy. She picked up overturned chairs and straightened the book shelves. Outside, the seniors were getting grouchy, but inside, the kids and the characters had become too silly to notice. “Can I help?” Zack asked Miss Smith. She handed the Incredible Storybook to Zack. “Remember,” Miss Smith said, “we have to finish each story so that the characters will go back into the book. Read the last page of each tale, while I deal with this mess!” Zack opened up the book and quickly finished all the stories. One by one, the characters went back into the Incredible Storybook. The puzzled book club burst into the room just as Zack finished the last page. “Okay, class, it’s time to check out your books,” Miss Smith said. She guided the class toward the big front desk. Everyone thanked Virginia Creeper before marching down the library steps and heading back to school. With borrowed books under their arms, the children were looking forward to reading more about all the characters they had just met. Zack smiled and wondered what they would read tomorrow.

Holmes remained pensively quiet, as had become his habit - one he'd formed shortly after I poisoned him, kicked fire in his face, and shot him twice through the chest.

I said I liked Amundsen and Scott and I liked King Solomon’s Mines and I liked everything by Dumas and I liked The Bad Seed and The Hound of the Baskervilles and I liked The Name of the Rose but the Italian was rather difficult.

But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right.

The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

As long as I have my trousers I have my hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it." -Lestrade, Hound of the Baskervilles.