Exceptional writing touches all generations

I am an avid reader, simply voracious, almost dinosaur-like in my voracity. Every once in awhile there is a passage that just stands up and punches me straight in the nose with how poignant it is. The true test of how well written something is (I feel) is to take it out of the time it was written, a fish out of water if you will, and see how well it translates.

For an example of this I would like to share what I believe to be one of the most beautiful and well written passages ever. It is from one of my all time favourite book series and authors and I feel it touches my life, even today over a hundred years after it was originally published.

"What a lovely thing a rose is!"
He walked past the couch to the open window, and held up the drooping stalk of a moss rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.
"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from flowers."

-The adventures of Sherlock Holmes XXIII- The adventure of the naval treaty by Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.