Well, you see, Mr Scarman, I have the advantage of being slightly ahead of you. Sometimes behind you, but normally ahead of you.

— The Doctor, in “The Pyramids of Mars”

“Look at those big, isolated clumps of building rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-colored sea.”

“The board-schools.”

“Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wise, better England of the future.”

— Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”

“He says he doesn't know who he is or why he has come.”

“Well, I admire a man with an open mind.”

— Ruther and Shardovan, in “Castrovalva”

“If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing — a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”

They say the atmosphere there was so full of goodness that evil just shrivelled up and died. Maybe that's why I never went there.

— The Doctor, in “The Keeper of Traken”

“When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage of it. In the case of the Darlington substitution scandal it was of use to me, and also in the Arnsworth Castle business. A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “A Scandal in Bohemia”

“I feel disoriented.”

“This is the Disorientation Centre.”

“That makes sense.”

— The Doctor and Sarah, in “The Android Invasion”

“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 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 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 outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

— From “A Case of Identity”

A quotation from Samuel Johnson

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
In George Birkbeck Hill (ed.), Johnsonian Miscellanies, Vol. 2, “Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions, & Occasional Reflections” (1897)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/johnson-samuel/19790…

We're all basically primeval slime with ideas above its station.

— The Doctor, in “Full Circle”

“The next sign is C2. What do you make of that, Watson?”

“Chapter the second, no doubt.”

“Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.”

— Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in “The Valley of Fear”

“It is indeed, Mr. Holmes. I've had a bustling afternoon, I promise you. Did you see anything of the Yoxley case in the latest editions?”

“I've seen nothing later than the fifteenth century to-day.”

— Stanley Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes, in “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez”

“But I don't *exist* in your world!”

“Then you won't feel the bullets when we shoot you.”

— The Doctor and the Brigade Leader, in “Inferno”

A quotation from Marcus Aurelius

Constantly observe everything coming into being through change, and accustom yourself to the thought that universal nature loves nothing so much as to change the things that are and to create new things in their likeness. For everything that exists is, in a sense, the seed of what will arise from it.
 
[Θεώρει διηνεκῶς πάντα κατὰ μεταβολὴν γινόμενα καὶ ἐθίζου ἐννοεῖν, ὅτι οὐδὲν οὕτως φιλεῖ ἡ τῶν ὅλων φύσις ὡς τὸ τὰ ὄντα μεταβάλλειν καὶ ποιεῖν νέα ὅμοια. σπέρμα γὰρ τρόπον τινὰ πᾶν τὸ ὃν τοῦ ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἐσομένου.]

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 4, ch. 36 (4.36) (AD 161-180) [tr. Hard (2011 ed.)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/marcus-aureleus/2668…

A quotation from Banksy

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

Banksy (b. 1974) England-based pseudonymous street artist, political activist, film director
Wall and Piece, Introduction (2005)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/banksy/76224/

Mr. Melas, however, still lived, and in less than an hour, with the aid of ammonia and brandy I had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes, and of knowing that my hand had drawn him back from that dark valley in which all paths meet.

— Watson, in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter”

“Traken Union, famous for its harmony. A whole empire held together by... by people being terribly nice to each other.”

“Well, that makes a change.”

— The Doctor and Adric, in “The Keeper of Traken”

GLOUCESTER: 'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind.

— King Lear, IV, i

But what if it's really funny?

Anyway, Mr. Fitzgerald would have hated texting me.

“Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for? 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 dun-colored houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, doctor, 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.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “The Sign of the Four”