Mycroft Quotes

Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.

"One cannot be a mother without first being a person; family, husband, and children should not be allowed, as is so often the case, to steal a woman’s selfhood and her dreams." Mother to Sherlock, Mycroft, and Enola Holmes by author Nancy Springer

There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.

I'm living in a world of goldfish.

I am a . . . solitary . . . man, he said. 'I do not suffer fools gladly, and I prefer to spend my time alone with a book and a decanter of brandy.

I admit to being a moron at lots of things. Being a moron in one or two areas serves to highlight my extraordinary brilliance in everything else.

So what did Conroy say to you this arvo, after I left?' He said, Rachel Watts is hot stuff, and I'd like to ask her out. Got any tips?' 'Mycroft, don't be juvenile.' 'I am a juvenile.' 'Then don't be grotesque. Are you going to tell me or not?' Mycroft fiddles with the cigarette pack, loose in his long fingers. 'Nothing to tell,' he says. 'Conroy uses the same material in every speech. The we can't put up with this behaviour forever line, and the one more stunt like this line. I can't figure out why he keeps recycling.' 'Maybe he thinks constant repetition will make it sink in.' 'See, that's Einstein's definition of insanity right there - doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.

If you looked inside his brain at this moment you’d see all the little synapses, Catherine wheels and penny bangers and skyrockets, all firing off into space in some sparkling display of gathering momentum. I don’t want to look into his brain. Looking into his eyes is bad enough.

The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men. He's always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It's six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.

Child: "The Major and the soldiers and Mycroft told me what war is like. They say it's the second worst thing in the world." Man: "That's an interesting definition. What did they say is the worst thing?" Child: "Not having anything worth fighting for in the first place.

Most of Mycroft's ideas were far too dangerous to even think about, much less let loose on a world unprepared for hyper-radical thought.

Complacency is the enemy, Mycroft, not xenophobia. An old phoenix needs burning

We are in Buckingham Palace, the very heart of the British nation. Sherlock Holmes, put your trousers on!

I don't believe. I hope. There's no knowing, is there? Only anticipation.

Mycroft Holmes: ...a necessary evil, not a dragon for you to slay. Sherlock Holmes: A dragon slayer? Is that what you think of me? Mycroft: No... It's what you think of yourself. Mrs. Holmes/Mum: Are you two smoking? Mycroft: No- Sherlock: It was Mycroft! (They hide their lighted cigarettes behind their backs.) -Sherlock, "His Last Vow", season/series 3

I had to suppress a smile. Sherlock Holmes once remarked of his brother, Mycroft, that you were as unlikely to find him outside of the Diogenes Club as you were to meet a tramcar coming down a country lane. Like Mycroft, Father had his rails, and he ran on them. Except for church and the occasional short-tempered dash to the train to attend a stamp show, Father seldom, if ever, stuck his nose out-of-doors.

You see why I married her, Mycroft? The exquisite juxtaposition of ladylike threads and backhanded compliments proved irresistible.

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. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.

You look at me as if I were a conjuror,' Holmes remarked, with a laugh.

Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.” This was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him?

All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage." -

Fourth, a telegram from brother Mycroft: ‘Will visit at earliest possible convenience—great uproar in Whitehall. Mend quickly; your death would be most inconvenient at this time.

He had breath in him once,” he declared. “He is to be treated with respect, no matter the cost.” “Now is not the time for empty ritual,” Holmes thundered. “Now is precisely the time!” Douglas thundered back. “When we ourselves are empty, it is the ritual that turns us human again.

Mai grins at Mycroft. ‘You know that’s slightly ridiculous, don’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Why?’ ‘Because. . . because you’re teenagers.’ Mai’s expression says it should be obvious. ‘Mycroft, this isn’t like figuring out who spray-painted some guy’s car. This is murder.’ ‘The principles are the same’ he insists. ‘But you’re both minors. And you have no access to police information, no experience, no forensics lab, no authority. . . ’ ‘Mai, are you trying to bring me down or something?’ Gus, who usually only gets emotive about things like soccer, suddenly leans forward. ‘I think you should do it.’ He glances at me and Mycroft in turn. ‘This homeless guy, it’s not like his death is going to be a major priority, is it? The police won’t bend over backwards to bring his killer to justice or anything. He was a derelict with no family. So you two are the only ones who even care.

Pride goeth before destruction,” he quoted, “and a haughty spirit before a fall.

No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk.

You survived.’ The look on his face is almost surprised. He blinks at me from somewhere deep in his mental bubble. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, I guess.’ But in that second, in his face, I see the whole world. I finally understand something crucial. James Mycroft did die in that car crash seven years ago. Seeing what he saw, experiencing all that pain, that ten-year-old boy passed away. The person who returned was not the same. He was changed so completely, so physically and mentally transformed, it was as though a whole different individual was born. A different boy, living in a different place, with a guardian and no parents, a boy with no past and only one name... All the blood rushes out of my cheeks as that name falls off my lips. ‘Mycroft...

Imagine: If a man who shakes hands up and down meets a man who shakes hands side to side, what will happen? Nathan looked perplexed but he extended his hand all the same. As they shook, their clasped hands went round and round in circles.

When you have bewitched or assassinated the unwelcome, whoever remains, however useless & boring, must be the only audience you still have left!" -- Warlock Holmes, the Cumber-Batching Speech Not only my advisers considered the quote above the best I got done at all on the Sherlock Crossover now lying in my failed projects folder...

I could ask any contemporary here, ‘Are you a majority?’ and I know what he or she would answer: Of course not, Mycroft. I have a Hive, a race, a second language, a vocation and an avocation, hobbies of my own; add up my many strats and you will soon reduce me to a minority of one, and hence my happiness. I am unique, and proud of my uniqueness, and prouder still that, by being no majority, I ensure eternal peace. You lie, reader. There is one majority still entrenched in our commingled world, a great ‘us’ against a smaller ‘them.’ You will see it in time. I shall give only one hint—the deadliest majority is not something most of my contemporaries are, reader, it is something they are not. «

...the mustard on the roof of my mouth gave me the feeling that someone was removing my nasal hair with a blowtorch.

GSD?’ murmured Mycroft. ‘What in heaven’s name is that?’ ‘Global Standard Deity,’ answered Polly. ‘It’s a mixture of all the religions. I think it’s meant to stop religious wars.

I think that you could have used your vast intellect far more usefully by serving mankind instead of stealing it. -Mycroft "Where's the fun in that? Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. The best reason for committing Loathsome and detestable acts - and let's face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field - is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good." -Acheron

The foolish will tread where the wise will not,” Holmes replied. “If we waited for the wisdom of this venture, Douglas and I would still be in London.” “To fools, then!” Little Huan exclaimed. “To fools!” the others declared.

...who knows what happened to the other piece?" "Actually," said Reed. "I think I can guess." He looked around the table, pleased with the incredulous reactions he'd drawn. "What are you, Sherlock Holmes or something?" said Jackson. "I always preferred to see myself as Mycroft, actually.

All lives end, all hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.

Your father may never have produced one of those stuffy tomes we call great literature, but he left the world a substantial collection of delightful adventure stories.

My dear Watson," said he, "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. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.

[p.89] Mycroft said, ‘You are right of course, Sherlock. Had I forced myself to exercise. Had I lived on birdseed and cabbages instead of porterhouse steak. Had I taken up country dancing along with a wife and a puppy and in all other ways behaved contrary to my nature, I might have bought myself another dozen or so years. But what is that in the scheme of things? Little enough. And sooner or later, I would enter my dotage.

Does it distress you, reader, how I remind you of their sexes in each sentence? ‘Hers’ and ‘his’? Does it make you see them naked in each other’s arms, and fill even this plain scene with wanton sensuality? Linguists will tell you the ancients were less sensitive to gendered language than we are, that we react to it because it’s rare, but that in ages that heard ‘he’ and ‘she’ in every sentence they grew stale, as the glimpse of an ankle holds no sensuality when skirts grow short. I don’t believe it. I think gendered language was every bit as sensual to our predecessors as it is to us, but they admitted the place of sex in every thought and gesture, while our prudish era, hiding behind the neutered ‘they,’ pretends that we do not assume any two people who lock eyes may have fornicated in their minds if not their flesh. You protest: My mind is not as dirty as thine, Mycroft. My distress is at the strangeness of applying ‘he’ and ‘she’ to thy 2450s, where they have no place. Would that you were right, good reader. Would that ‘he’ and ‘she’ and their electric power were unknown in my day. Alas, it is from these very words that the transformation came which I am commanded to describe, so I must use them to describe it. I am sorry, reader. I cannot offer wine without the poison of the alcohol within.

To whom it may concern, The bearer of this letter, Mr Franklin Liddle, is hereby employed by the Secret Service of her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria, and is on a special assignment for the British government. By Royal Decree, let it be known that should Mr Liddle break any laws while completing work of a most delicate nature, he is absolved of any wrongdoing. Officers of the law should not restrict Mr Liddle from completing such work even if it seems contrary to your sworn duty. Interfering with Mr Liddle’s aforementioned work may result in your own incarceration and possible execution. Signed, Mycroft Holmes   The

He was amazing. He was addicting. At that moment I knew...Owen Mycroft wasn't just a male. This music was of another world, his fluid movements were unlike any human on Earth and sparks flew from his eyes. Couldn't anyone else in the room see those fireworks? Was I the only one? I didn't care what he was. I was in his world now.

This thought is genius "Everybody dies. It's the one thing human beings can be relied upon to do. How can it still come as a surprise to people?" - From Sherlock TV Series/Mycroft

into which he placed a large-print copy of Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” To this he added the bookworms, who busily got to work. They slithered over the text, their small bodies and unfathomable collective id unconsciously examining every sentence, word, vowel sound and syllable. They probed deeply into the historical, biographical and geographical allusions, then they explored the inner meanings hidden within the meter and rhythm and juggled ingeniously with subtext, content and inflection. After that they made up a few verses of their own and converted the result into binary. Lakes! Daffodils! Solitude! Memory! whispered the worms excitedly as Mycroft carefully closed the book and locked it.

Pan Mycroft to, pan Mycroft tamto, pan Mycroft może iść się wypchać.

don’t know where she’s gone,” I said, and to my own surprise—for I had not wept until that moment—I burst into tears. • • • Further mention of Mum, then, was put off until we sat in the hired brougham, with my bicycle strapped on behind, swaying along towards Kineford. “We are a pair of thoughtless brutes,” Sherlock had observed to Mycroft at one point, while providing me with a large, very starchy handkerchief hardly comforting to the nose. I am sure they thought

Mycroft, has no one ever pointed out to you that name-calling can be extremely revealing?” “Revealing of irritation, perhaps.” “Or, of a sensitivity over the truth. Brother mine, the power you wield is dangerous.

of nature, which I most definitely was not. “So, Enola,” asked Mycroft gruffly after a while, “are you feeling well enough to tell us what has happened?” I did so, but there was little to add to what they already knew. Mum had left home early on Tuesday morning and had not returned since. No, she had left me no message or explanation of any sort. No, there was no reason to think she might have taken ill; her health was excellent. No, there had been no word of her from anyone. No, in answer to Sherlock’s questions, there had been no bloodstains, no footprints, no signs of forced entry, and I did not know

Eis qui sine peccato est vestrum primus in illam lapidem mittat!

Douglas wondered if his friend would make it out of this alive. He realized, not for the first time, that life or death was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the mission, their own small attempt to “proclaim liberty to the captives,” as the Book of Isaiah had commanded nearly three thousand years before. To engage in a war where there would be no material benefit for the victor other than the liberation of oppressed and victimized human beings.

I went back two weeks running, then three months after, just to be sure, and then a year after that. So punctual are they that they have trained the local birds to fly in for their breakfast.” Holmes sighed as he took a pull of his Partagás. “Rich or poor, Douglas, we are all creatures of habit.

All lives end; all hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.

Finding meaning in the rich pile of Mycroft’s words is like digging through molasses

Ah, Watson.” Holmes looked up from his fingerprint dusting. “One of the gentlemen present this morning, a Russian arms dealer named Dimitrios, was either inadvertently or by design in possession of a bomb, which we managed to defuse. We are now attempting to discover whether the individual who planted the bomb left us with any identifying clues.” “I see.” Watson sat down on the opposite end of the sofa from Mycroft. “In other words, an average morning, then.

The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

…those distant lights of heaven that time snuffed out a million years ago, whose radiance still crawls to us at light speed, brightening our night with gravestones.

The rain pattered on the windows as Mycroft was driven through the dreary streets of London. He frowned at the typical English weather. He'd been in his house, working, for ten straight days, and it annoyed him to find it raining the minute he needed to leave and see his brother. On top of splotching his tailored suit, it made the traffic worse.

He patted te large book that was the Prose Portl and looked at Mycroft’s genetically engineered bookworms. They were on rest & recuperation at present in their goldfish bowl; they had just digested a recent meal of prepositions and were happily farting out apostrophes and ampersands

There was a silence. Holmes smoked, Mycroft poured himself a small brandy and took a sip. It was nine in the morning. Where was my coffee?

I suppose that, every once in a while, fortune smiles even upon murderers.

    We didn't know the nature of lightning or rainbows for three and a half million years, pet. Don't reject it just because it seems impossible. If we closed our minds, there would never be the Gravitube, antimatter, Prose Portals, thermos flasks—"     "Wait!" I interrupted. "How does a thermos fit in with that lot?"     Because, my dear girl," replied Mycroft, cleaning the blackboard and drawing a crude picture of a thermos with a question mark, "no one has the least idea why they work." He stared at me for a moment and continued: "You will agree that a vacuum flask keeps hot things hot in the winter and cold things cold in the summer?"     "Yes—?"     "Well, how does it know? I've studied vacuum flasks for many years and not one of them gave any clues as to their inherent seasonal cognitive ability. It's a mystery to me, I can tell you.

all lives end and all hearts are broken

You really ought not chastise your son, madam,” Mycroft Holmes spoke up. “After all, he was detained by the queen!

They were now forced to graft hardy American vines onto their native plants.

She supposed if a lot of time passed and she never got any further with Myron she could always reconsider Sebastian, but she knew that was unlikely to happen. Now that she'd decided she preferred Myron, seeing the younger brother would be a reminder that she hadn't captured the attention of the better sibling.

I had learned from my mother’s many letters that Mycroft had invented a method for sending pizzas by fax

He thought for a moment. “Perhaps the Bennett family could do with some thinning . . .” “Pride and Prejudice!?” yelled Mycroft. “You heartless monster!

Shank’s pony as it was only a twenty-minute walk from Baker Street. All in an April evening, I thought first about the distressing effect the events of the recent past must have had on the Munro children and the strangeness of their actions as reported by Miss Ainslie. As we approached the grand portico of the hotel, my thoughts shifted to Mycroft’s admonition to look for the mysterious second woman who had been seen with Mr. Munro and his children on the train platform.