The Sign of Four (1987 TV Movie)

Jeremy Brett: Sherlock Holmes

Photos 

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Dr. John Watson : What a very attractive woman.

  Sherlock Holmes : Was she? I hadn't noticed.

• Sherlock Holmes : You will not follow my precept. How often have I said to you when once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, *however improbable*, must be the truth?

• [first lines] 

  Dr. John Watson : Very pretty young woman crossing the street. And I think she may be coming here.

  Sherlock Holmes : Incidentally, I have glanced over your latest account of my work.

  Dr. John Watson : Oh, yes?

  Sherlock Holmes : Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science. Observation, deduction, a cold unemotional subject. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism which has much the same effect as if you'd worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.

• Dr. John Watson : What a very attractive woman!

  Sherlock Holmes : It is of the first importance not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client to me is a mere unit, a factor of the problem.

  Dr. John Watson : Holmes, you are an automaton, a calculating machine; there is something positively inhuman in you at times.

  Sherlock Holmes : I assure you the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.

  Dr. John Watson : However, in this case...

  Sherlock Holmes : Ah. I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.