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The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
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“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Source
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Date
1902
Meaning

Meaning of “The world is full of obvious things which…”

Holmes distinguishes mere visibility from real observation: information can be plainly present and still go unused when attention remains superficial.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter III, “The Problem,” Project Gutenberg #2852. Sherlock Holmes says that the world is full of obvious things nobody observes after inferring from Watson’s clean clothes and boots that he spent the rainy day indoors, then asks Watson to infer where Holmes himself has been. It remains fictional detective dialogue illustrating Holmes’s observational method rather than a universal scientific rule.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

CuriosityDeepMindMindfulnessShortThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionKnowledgePerceptionReason
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Opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance?
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“Opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance?”

Plato · The Republic · 4th century BCE
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Meaning & context

Opinion is treated as an intermediate state: it is not complete ignorance, but it also lacks the clarity and stability of knowledge.

Source details

The Republic, Book V; Socrates places opinion between knowledge and ignorance in the argument about what each apprehends.

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The world is my idea.
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“The world is my idea.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) · 1818
Meaning & context

Schopenhauer opens his system by arguing that the experienced world is always presented in relation to a knowing subject, making perception and consciousness conditions of the world as it is known.

Source details

The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I, First Book, §1, Haldane and Kemp translation, Project Gutenberg #38427. “Idea” translates Vorstellung in this historical philosophical vocabulary and should not be read as the everyday sense of a passing thought.

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All men by nature desire to know.
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“All men by nature desire to know.”

Aristotle · Metaphysics · c. 350 BCE
Meaning & context

Aristotle treats the desire for knowledge as a basic human tendency, giving curiosity a foundational place in the movement from perception toward understanding.

Source details

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter I, W. D. Ross translation (1908), validated Wikisource scan leaf 21. 'All men by nature desire to know' opens the work before the discussion of sensation, memory, experience, art and knowledge. This remains ancient philosophy mediated by translation, not a modern empirical finding about cognition.

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I am not young enough to know everything.
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”

J. M. Barrie · The Admirable Crichton · 1902
Meaning & context

Barrie reverses the cliché that age brings complete wisdom, making youthful certainty—not age—the comic claim to omniscience.

Source details

The Admirable Crichton, Act I, Project Gutenberg #3490. Ernest Woolley repeatedly delivers “I am not young enough to know everything” as a self-consciously clever epigram while Agatha, Treherne and the others struggle to understand it; Crichton later says he has no idea what Ernest meant. It remains fictional comic dialogue rather than J. M. Barrie autobiography or a factual claim about age and knowledge.

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Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know.
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“Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know.”

Michel de Montaigne · Essays of Montaigne — Book I · 1580
Meaning & context

Certainty can be strongest where understanding is weakest, so confidence by itself is poor evidence that a belief has been examined well.

Source details

Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXXI, ‘That a Man Is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinances,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 06 #3586 / Complete Essays #3600. The sentence appears in Montaigne’s skeptical warning about confidence concerning unknown things and speculative claims about divine purposes.

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It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
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“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

Arthur Conan Doyle · A Scandal in Bohemia · 1891
Meaning & context

Holmes argues that explanations should follow evidence because an early theory can tempt a person to force later facts into a preferred story.

Source details

“A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), Project Gutenberg #1661. Holmes immediately warns that premature theorizing leads people to twist facts to suit theories; it is fictional detective dialogue.