Sherlock Holmes: [sitting down gingerly to remove his make-up] Oh, I'm as stiff as a varnished eel!

- Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes) in The Pearl of Death (1944)

Sherlock Holmes: [to Watson] My dear chap, I really must caution you against hitting newspaper reporters in the teeth...

- Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes) in The Pearl of Death (1944)

Sherlock Holmes: I don't like the smell of you - an underground smell, the sick sweetness of decay. You haven't robbed and killed merely for the game like any ordinary halfway decent thug. No, you're in love with cruelty for it's own sake.

- Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes) in The Pearl of Death (1944)

Sherlock Holmes: This man pervades Europe like a plague, yet no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on the pinnacle in the records of crime. In his whole diabolical career, the police have never been able to pin anything on him. And yet, if there be a crime without a motive, I'll show you Giles Conover! If I could free society of this sinister creature, I should feel my own career had reached it's summit.

- Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes) in The Pearl of Death (1944)