Alexander Lyovkin

sere and yellow

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.

where there is no imagination there is no horror.

“I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious, because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn.

These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so

“Look here, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “we are all ready to acknowledge that you are a smart man, and that you have your own methods of working. We want something more than mere theory and preaching now, though. It is a case of taking the man. I have made my case out, and it seems I was wrong. Young Charpentier could not have been engaged in this second affair. Lestrade went after his man, Stangerson, and it appears that he was wrong too. You have thrown out hints here, and hints there, and seem to know more than we do, but the time has come when we feel that we have a right to ask you straight how much you do know of the business. Can you name the man who did it?”

His eyes were sharp and piercing

“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,”