Jesteśmy społecznością, która kocha książki

Kiedy wszystkie inne rozwiązania są niemożliwe, skorzystaj z tego, które zostało jakkolwiek nieprawdopodobne by się wydawało.

Kiedy masz tylko dwa wyjścia i żadne ci się nie podoba, szukaj trzeciego.

Przygoda jest wszędzie, jeśli tylko wie się, gdzie patrzeć.
- Rufus Stone

Myślę, że gdziekolwiek człowiek się obróci, wszędzie czyha jakieś niebezpieczeństwo. Można je albo zignorować, albo owinąć się w koce, żeby nic nam się nie stało, albo stawić mu czoła i rzucić wyzwanie. Jeśli zrobisz to pierwsze, niebezpieczeństwo cię zaskoczy. Jeśli zrobisz to drugie, spędzisz życie okutany i skulony w ciemności, a życie cię ominie. Jedynym logicznym rozwiązaniem jest więc wyjść niebezpieczeństwu naprzeciw. Im bardziej się do niego przywyknie, tym łatwiej sobie z nim poradzić.

- Myślałeś kiedyś o mrówkach? - zapytał Amyus Crowe. Sherlock potrząsnął głową.
- Poza tym, że na piknikach obłażą kanapki z dżemem, chyba nigdy się nad nimi nie zastanawiałem.

If there is one thing I have discovered about people it is this: nobody ever believes that they will die. Others around them, yes, but each person privately believes that they personaly are invincible.

The kind of justice that comes out of the barrel of a gun.

The full weight of loneliness descended on him like leaden cloud, and he found his eyes stinging with hot tears. If he died out here, on board the Gloria Scott, thousands of miles from England, then nobody would forget about him within a few weeks.

He had been lucky in the teachers he had met over the past two years - Amyus Crowe, Rufus Stone and Wu Chung. And Mycroft, of course, although his brother rarely gave the impression that he was teaching Sherlock anything, despite the fact that everything he said contained a lesson of some sort.

Horrible though it had been, there was something strangely and dengerously seductive about that feeling. he never wanted to exprerience it again, and yet a little bit of him missed the way it made him feel. The way it had made him forget about everything that was worrying him.

Mother doesn't like me eating in the street", he said apologetically. "She thinks I'll catch some terrible disease". "Maybe you're protecting yourself from disease, by eating the local food and playing with the local kids", Sherlock suggested. "maybe the people who wtay indoors all the time and isolate themselves from everythig are the ones who catch the first disease they encounter, rather than shrug it off" Cameron stared at him. "You know you think too much, don't you?".

A useful lesson for the future, he decided: if you looked like you weren't afraid, then animals, and maybe people, would treat you as if you actually weren't afraid.

Sometimes, he thought, doing the right thing was much harder than doin the wrong thing. Sometimes, doing the right thing was the hardest thing in the world.

Is your whole life like this? Sherlock asked.
"Like what?"
"Double- and triple-guessing the actions not only of everyone around you, but also of yourself?"
Mycroft considered for a moment. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, I believe it is. It is called "international diplomacy"."
Sherlock laughed quietly. "I don't think I could do the job that you do, Mycroft. My thoughts are very direct: "A" always leads to "B" in my world. Tour thoughts twist and turn in all directions, apparently depending on the time of day, the ambient temperature and the wind direction."
Mycroft turned and gazed sympathetically at Sherlock.
"And that," he said quietly, "is why I envy you. My mind is already affected by what I do. I can never unwind those twists and turns. Your mind, by contrast, is so much simpler - and therefore so much happier.".

Sherlock glanced around at the faces of the others. They held a range of expression was, of course, on his brother's face.

Very clever." Mycroft relaxed back into his chair. "Your mind is so sharp, Sherlock, that you will end up cutting yourself one day.".

Crowe nodded. "That's the problem with the truth son. It don't please a lot of people, because it upsets the neat little applecart of their world. Don't mean that you should avoid the truth, though. You should never do that. You just need to be aware that you'll have fewer friends because of it, but also that the ones who stay will be better friends".

Podobnie jak wiele innych rzeczy, które zdążył zobaczyć w Rosji, wyglądała jak efekt zderzenia całkowitego przypadku z przemyślanym aktem twórczym.

He thought about what his brother had said, about him taking up a career in banking. He honestly couldn't see that happening. He wasn't going to go into the Civil Service, like his brother, either, and he certainly wasn't going to join the Army like his father. But what did that leave? Going back to sea? Setting up a trading company and importing foodstuffs and silk from China?
It suddenly occurred to him that the past few days, when he had been set a series of problems to solve and had pretty much solved them all, had been some of the best fun he'd had for ages. He liked solving problems. It satisfied an itch inside his brain. He had particularly liked seeing the expressions on the faces of von Webenau, Herr Holtzbrink, and Count Shucalow when he explained on his own brother's face when Mycroft had seen the cardboard model of the tower. It had been a thrill, and he wanted to see if he could get that thrill again. The problem was that he didn't see how he could make that into a career. The closest he could come to it would be joining the police force, but he really didn't see himself in uniform, and his experience of the police, albeit limited do far, was that they turned up at the scene of a crime, said some things that were already obvious to everyone, and arrested the nearest suspicious-looking men.

You've got a cunnin' mind,' Matty pointed out. 'Ever thought of becomin' a criminal yourself?'.

He is looking at a plate of biscuits,' Dodgson said.
'I told him that he had to sit there for fifteen minutes without moving while I took the portrait. In fact the process only took eight minutes, but I was enjoying seeing him pining for the biscuits that I just left him there to suffer'.

It's the direction you were looking when you were talking. You were looking straight ahead during most of your story, but your eyes weren't focused on anything in particular, which indicates that you were putting together a series of memories into a coherent order, but when you mentioned the pathologist at the Oxford mortuary you looked up and to the left. That indicates you were remembering something specific that he said, something important."
"And you can tell all that just from the direction I was looking?" Sherlock asked, fascinated.
"To an extent. That's how I can tell when people are lying to me - their eyes drift to their right rather than their left. That means they're putting together stories, rather than remembering things. It's something I've observed over many years of having people tell me lies and tell me the truth. So - what is it that you were remembering?".

You're looking at the effects of people's lives on their bodies. You want to be able to look at a person and tell what they do for a living, where they've come from and how they live. You've been collecting body parts from a whole set of different people who have done different jobs, and you've been analysing them for characteristic traces."
"You sound like you already know about this kind of thing."
A sudden picture of Amyus Crowe's face flashed across Sherlock's memory. He caught his breath. He missed the big American. "I had a friend who did something similar".

He wasn't sure whether to be flattered, intrigued or furious. There were times when Mycroft's blatant and subtle interference in his life were very troubling. It was as if his brother didn't trust Sherlock to act on his own, and always sought to guide him through various means.

Man makes plans and God laughs," Sherlock said.

We should've woken Maberley up," Matty pointed out. "Or at least taken 'is gun."
"Don't tell me that now," Sherlock muttered. "Tell me that half an hour ago.".

Matty stared at him for a moment. "I hate when you don't have a plan," he said finally. "You don't do well when you're improvising."
"Hey, I got you out of the orchard in one piece, didn't I?"
Matty nodded. "You did at that. All right ten - take care of yourself. Don't die."
"I'll try not to.".

she was supplying poisons to criminals around the world?" Sherlock was aghast.
"She was" his brother confirmed. "Poison is a woman's weapon.".

He knew that his brother was wrong in this respect, and Mycroft's insistence that the world would always be pretty much the way it was now worried him. There were changes ahead - big changes - and the world needed to be ready for them.

When were ice cream cones invented?" (The answer is that they were first mentioned in the year 1825, where they were said to have been made from "little waffles", so, when Sherlock and Mycroft have their ice creams in the park in the epilogue, it's all historically accurate.).