# Quote — Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

> I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

- Author: [Arthur Conan Doyle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle.md)
- Book: [A Study in Scarlet](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/a-study-in-scarlet.md)
- Page: 83
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#A_Study_in_Scarlet_(1887)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/a-study-in-scarlet/i-have-already

## More from this book

> I had no idea that such individuals exist outside of stories.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/a-study-in-scarlet/i-had-no-idea.md)

> The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical — so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.

p. 23 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/a-study-in-scarlet/the-theories-which.md)

> You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/a-study-in-scarlet/you-have-been.md)