Quote Origin: When Hopes Seem Hardly Worth Having, Just Mount a Bicycle and Go For a Good Spin Down the Road

Arthur Conan Doyle? Sherlock Holmes? Diane Ackerman? Jeremy Withers? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a bicycle enthusiast. He suggested that taking a spin down the road on a bicycle would dispel feelings of discouragement and unhappiness. I do not know the precise phrasing Conan Doyle used. …

Elementary, My Dear Watson

Sherlock Holmes? Arthur Conan Doyle? J. Murray Moore? Franklin P. Adams? P. G. Wodehouse? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: When Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes was explaining to his good friend John A. Watson the nature of his latest deduction he supposedly employed the well-known phrase: Elementary, my dear Watson. I was astonished …

There But For the Grace of God, Go I

John Bradford? George Whitfield? John Newton? Sherlock Holmes? Philip Neri? Dwight Moody? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A deeply religious individual once saw a man being led to the gallows and said: There but for the grace of God, go I. In modern times, this proverbial phrase is used to express empathetic compassion and a sense of good …