# Quote — Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

> To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was 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 his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

- Author: [Arthur Conan Doyle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle.md)
- Book: [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes.md)
- Page: 161
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#A_Scandal_in_Bohemia) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/to-sherlock-holmes

## More from this book

> A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

p. 225 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/a-man-should.md)

> Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

p. 272 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/violence-does-in-truth.md)

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

p. 323 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-conan-doyle/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/the-lowest-and.md)