Wisdom of Sherlock Holmes

[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

Sherlock Holmes is an incarnation of me, and not I of Sherlock Holmes. I have no doubt that Conan Doyle was channeling my spirit when he came up with Sherlock Holmes.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognises genius.​

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I am the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen​

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My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.​

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There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.​

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[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

The Phora is my Dr. Watson or Boswell, since it has the remarkable power of stimulating the same genius.​

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I am lost without my Boswell.​

—Sherlock Holmes.​

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It may be that [Dr. Watson] is not himself luminous, but that he is a conductor of my light.​

—Sherlock Holmes.​

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Sherlock Holmes is an incarnation of me, and not I of Sherlock Holmes. I have no doubt that Conan Doyle was channeling my spirit when he came up with Sherlock Holmes.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle participated in séance and mediumship in which he communicated with nonliving spirits.

... The created is not the creator.​

... Is it not on the verge of inanity​

To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?​

He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,​

Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.​

So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:​

The doll and its maker are never identical.”​

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[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

Philosophy of Sherlock Holmes​

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Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.​

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There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.​

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You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There is an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it is God's own wind nonetheless, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.​

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The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.​

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If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination​

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The power of producing and appreciating music existed long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.​

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One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.​

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[Macrobius]

My father had a copy of the 'Complete Sherlock Holmes' and reading those stories was an incredibly important formative experience for me as well.

Highly recommended.

Did you also enjoy the silent movie, _Lost World_?

'Romanticism' is one name for 'Faustian'

 

[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

On Genius
by
Sherlock Holmes​

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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognises genius.​

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To a great mind, nothing is little.​

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I am a brain. The rest of me is a mere appendix.​

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I am the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen​

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To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea air, sunshine, and patience—all else will come.​

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It is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.​

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My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.​

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I never speak of the softer passions; they are admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained observer to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament would be to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of my own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as mine.​

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I am not tired. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.​

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I cannot live without brainwork. Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.​

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It may be that Dr. Watson is not himself luminous, but that he is a conductor of my light.​

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I am lost without my Boswell.​

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I loathe every form of society.​