Incipits : CONAN DOYLE, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.

(A Scandal in Bohemia)

I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year, and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman, with fiery red hair.

(The Red-headed League)

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anithing which the mind of man could invent."

(A Case of Identity)

We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought a telegram.

(The Boscombe Valley Mystery)

When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes casesbetween the years '82 and '90, I am faced by so many which present stange and interesting features that it is not easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave.

(Five Orange Pips)

Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George's, was much addicted to opium.

(The Man with the Twisted Lip)

I had callled upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season.

(The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle)

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of weath, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

(The Adventure of the Speckled Band)

Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice—that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colonel Warburton's madness.

(The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb)

The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves.

(The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor)

"Holmes," said I, as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking down te street, "here is a madman coming along.

(The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet)

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

(The Adventure of the Copper Beeches)

Arthur CONAN DOYLE, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.