If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, "There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman."

Sherlock Holmes, A Case of Identity, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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

Sherlock Holmes, A Case of Identity, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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.

Opening lines, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle