Jeremy Brett: Sherlock Holmes

The Sign of Four

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes: You will not follow my precept. How often have I said to you when once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, *however improbable*, must be the truth?

[first lines]
Dr. John Watson: Very pretty young woman crossing the street. And I think she may be coming here.
Sherlock Holmes: Incidentally, I have glanced over your latest account of my work.
Dr. John Watson: Oh, yes?
Sherlock Holmes: Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science. Observation, deduction, a cold unemotional subject. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism which has much the same effect as if you'd worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.

Dr. John Watson: What a very attractive woman!
Sherlock Holmes: It is of the first importance not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client to me is a mere unit, a factor of the problem.
Dr. John Watson: Holmes, you are an automaton, a calculating machine; there is something positively inhuman in you at times.
Sherlock Holmes: I assure you the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.
Dr. John Watson: However, in this case...
Sherlock Holmes: Ah. I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.