Sherlock Holmes quotes from Elementary

Good God, man. You look exactly the same!

Sherlock

As do you. Except that you've gained exactly one and a quarter stone, and your hairline's receded by half an inch.

You're slipping. I've gained exactly one and a half stone.

Sherlock

I'm not slipping, I've just grown more courteous.

Sherlock

Fatty, this is Watson. Watson, this is Fatty.

Mycroft

Fatty? (pats his stomach) I'd say I've slimmed down quite a bit, wouldn't you?

Sherlock

Lap band?

Mycroft

Exercise.

Sherlock

Exercise requires energy and ambition, and you've never had either.

Bell

Where's your better half?

Sherlock

One mystery at a time, Detective.

Watson

And you brought him here to help you make sense of the equations you found in the victim's house. I get that. What I don't get, is why he isn't wearing a shirt.

Sherlock

Every great thinker has a process, Watson. In Harlan's case, he doesn't like there to be anything between him and the numbers. Now I know you can feel quite Victorian about such things, so I gave him a little bell to ring in case he feels the need to disrobe completely. Having said that, I can't guarantee he won't sit on the furniture.

I've figured it out! It's P vs. NP!

Guys, come on! It's one of the most famous problems in math history...!

Sherlock

Harlan, if we were mathematicians, you would not be here.

Sherlock

What are you doing?

Joan

I'm looking at profiles of guys who winked at me on TrueRomantix.

Sherlock

I weep for the whole desperate lot of you.

Sherlock

So did you learn anything, Watson?

Joan

Yeah, that you fight dirty.

Sherlock

No, I fight without mercy, a habit that you should develop if you hope to defend yourself against bigger, stronger opponents. Which may occur unless we limit ourselves to investigating crimes committed by small children or large house cats.

Joan

Well, it certainly sounds like you had feelings for her.

Sherlock

Perhaps but... nothing so mundane as love. I was adrift back then. I had-had no purpose. My so-called peers made me feel that that might always be the case. Abigail, she gave me a gift. A view inside a mind capable of murder.

Watson

So she was your first...

Sherlock

Killer, yeah. Without intending to, she-she helped me understand who I was and-and what I might do with my life.

Sherlock

Sometimes, Watson, when one wants a diamond, one must resort to digging in a diamond mine.

Joan

For future reference, a morgue is not a diamond mine.

Sherlock

It's better. Diamonds are just pressed coal; corpses have stories, secrets.

Sherlock

Quite frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the captain's marriage to buckle. He's an excellent detective.

Joan

What does that have to do with it?

Sherlock

Well, as you know, detection is a calling, not a job. Hardly leaves one with time left over to sustain the elaborate ruse of marriage.

Joan

Because, of course, you think marriage is an elaborate ruse.

Sherlock

There are other ways to describe it. An unnatural arrangement which forces its participants into an unhealthy monogamy. An accretion of petty fights and resentful compromises which, like Chinese water torture, slowly transforms both parties into howling, neurotic versions of their former selves.

Sherlock

I often wonder if I should have been born in another time. [...] My senses are unusually--well, one could even say, unnaturally keen. And ours is an era of distraction. It's a punishing drumbeat of constant input. This cacophony which follows us into our homes and into our beds, and seeps into our...into our souls, for want of a better word. For a long time, there was only one poultice for my raw nerve endings, and that was copious drug use. So in my less productive moments, I'm given to wonder...If I'd just been born when it was a little quieter out there, would I have even become an addict in the first place? Might I have been more focussed? A more fully realized person?

(joking) When, Ancient Greece?

Sherlock

Have you any idea what passed for dental care in the Hellenic era?

Sherlock

Could you just stay out of the eyeline?

Mycroft

You're joking. I was just standing here.

Sherlock

Yes, that's the problem.

Joan

[Sherlock is jabbing her while she's sleeping] Why are you poking me with your single stick?

Sherlock

I'm prodding the sheets in order to determine whether or not my brother is in there with you.

Joan

This is one of those "so many questions" moments. Why only three times a year?

Sherlock

Well, I'm not sure, having never milked a moose. I imagine one must catch it in the right mood.

Sherlock

I've given further consideration to your rebuke regarding my capacity for niceness.

Joan

I didn't mean it as a rebuke. I was trying to have a conversation.

Sherlock

Either way. You have a point. There is unquestionably a certain social utility to being polite. To maintaining an awareness of other people's sensitivities. To exhibiting all the traits that might commonly be grouped under the heading nice.

Joan

I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to earn that designation.

Sherlock

No. I am not a nice man. It's important that you understand that. It's going to save you a great deal of time and effort. There is not a warmer, kinder me waiting to be coaxed out into the light. I am acerbic. I can be cruel. It's who I am. Right to the bottom. I'm neither proud of this, nor ashamed of it. It simply is. And in my work, my nature has been an advantage far more often than it has been a hindrance. I'm not gonna change.

Joan

You already have. You're not the same person I met a year and a half ago. You're--

Sherlock

Good to you? Yeah. For the most part. I consider you to be... exceptional. So I make an exceptional effort to accommodate you. But you must accept that, for as long as you choose to be in my life, there will occasionally be fallout from my behavior. That must be a part of our understanding.

Joan

No one can accept something like that forever.

Sherlock

To thine own self, Watson.