Life & Wisdom Quote by Arthur Conan Doyle

A Conan Doyle line like this works because it performs impatience while pretending to perform politeness. The opening, “You will, I am sure, agree with me,” is pure social velvet: a presumptive invitation to consent that politely corners the reader into nodding along. Then he springs the trap. If page 534 still leaves us in chapter two, the first chapter wasn’t merely long; it was “really intolerable.” The joke lands by inflating a mild complaint into an arithmetical inevitability, as if boredom can be proven with pagination.

The specific intent is twofold: to needle a bloated book (or speaker) and to establish a narrator’s authority as someone with taste, briskness, and a low tolerance for self-indulgence. Doyle doesn’t need to describe the offending prose. He lets the number do the work, turning a private editorial groan into a public verdict.

Subtextually, it’s also a defense of narrative economy. Doyle made his name on momentum: clues, turns, brisk scenes, the pleasure of being carried forward. This line enacts that ethos by mocking the opposite, the kind of writing that mistakes bulk for seriousness. It’s a writer’s jab at writers, but it’s also a reader’s revenge fantasy: the moment you realize you’re trapped in someone else’s endless preamble and decide to make a joke sharp enough to cut your way out.

Context matters because it’s Victorian and Edwardian culture with its reverence for the big, improving tome. Doyle punctures that reverence with a single, well-aimed page number.