December 30, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
As 2022 comes to a close, we must explore the mixed meanings which come from an interaction of old and new. This year, for a quirky, somewhat strange aside, we supply some quotes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who explored the world through the voice of Sherlock Holmes. I hope that Holmes’s wisdom brings a smile to your face as you leave 2022 and embrace 2023.
“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room…. You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.” – From “A Scandal in Bohemia”
“The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he [Sherlock Holmes] became a specialist in crime.” – From “A Scandal in Bohemia”
“A little over-precipitance may ruin all.” – From “A Scandal in Bohemia”“[F]or strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.” – From “The Red-Headed League”
“[T]he more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be.” – From “The Red-Headed League”
“[L]ife is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” – From “A Case of Identity”
“Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.” – From “A Case of Identity”
“There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.” – From “A Case of Identity”
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” – From “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”
“All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization.” – From “The Five Orange Pips”“[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.” – From “The Five Orange Pips”
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