The Hound of the Baskervilles Quotes
The 6 most famous lines from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.
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“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”
- Dr. Mortimer. The sentence that ends chapter one — the single most famous line in the Holmes canon, delivered reading from an old manuscript.
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“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light.”
- Sherlock Holmes. To Watson in Baker Street, pretending to diminish him while admitting his usefulness — their whole friendship in one exchange.
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“The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”
- Sherlock Holmes. Prodding Mortimer toward the case's real possibility: a naturalist's supernatural that needs no hell to run.
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“Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”
- Dr. Watson. Hidden on the moor, watching over the dead convict — Watson's compassion reaching even the man the island-farm would rather forget.
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“It may be that you are right... but I shall be even with him yet”
- Dr. Watson (notebook). Watson's private vow about the face in the cab he cannot yet name — the diary-entry style Doyle uses to keep the reader exactly one step behind.
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“I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world. In a modest way I have peopled it with my own creations.”
- Sherlock Holmes. From the serialization's winding-up — Holmes declining the supernatural in favor of the more interesting human explanation.
Why these lines survive
Arthur Conan Doyle’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 6 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.
Quote collectors: pair this page with the The Hound of the Baskervilles quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 4 hours and 25 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like The Hound of the Baskervilles list is next.
Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Sherlock Holmes books in order guide lists every book.
How to use a quotes page
Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Arthur Conan Doyle are an invitation, not a summary.
More quote collections
Great Expectations quotes, Heart of Darkness quotes, The Time Machine quotes, A Tale of Two Cities quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous quote from The Hound of the Baskervilles?
“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!” - the line most readers meet first. The full list above gives the scene for every one of the 6.
How many The Hound of the Baskervilles quotes are here?
6, chosen because they are the lines readers actually underline and repeat - each with who says it and where it lands in the book.
Are these quotes explained?
Yes - every quote carries its speaker and a one-line context, because a quote without its scene loses most of its charge.
Can I use these in an essay or post?
Short quoted lines with attribution are standard fair use in essays and posts. Quote accurately, name the author, and you are on solid ground.
Are these The Hound of the Baskervilles quotes word-for-word accurate?
They are checked against the novel as written, not harvested from quote sites - which is why a few famous “lines” you may have seen elsewhere are missing here: many of those come from film adaptations or paraphrase the prose. What is listed above is the book.