Mary Roberts Rinehart Quotes

The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.

Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation.

People that trust themselves a dozen miles from the city, in strange houses, with servants they don't know, needn't be surprised if they wake up some morning and find their throats cut.

Love is like the measles, all the worse when it comes late.

having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable.

I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life.

Every crucial experience can be regarded either as a setback, or the start of a wonderful new adventure, it depends on your perspective!

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

It takes a good many years and some pretty hard knocks to make people tolerant.

It is only in his head that man is heroic; in the pit of his stomach he is always a coward.

It's money that brings trouble. It always has and it always will.

Conflict is the very essence of life.

Useless as a pulled tooth.

Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

Curious, how one remembered Christmas. Perhaps because other days might appeal to the head, but this one appealed to the heart.

Every crucial experience can be regarded as a setback - or a start of a new kind of development. [You have the responsibility to decide if you will see it as a bad setback or good start!]

Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.

Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

there is no truly honest autobiography.

Men were not equal in the effort they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal result. ... Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality of effort and result, no.

Death was a beginning and not an end; it was the morning of the spirit. Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls wakened to the morning, rested; the first fruits of them that slept.

there comes a time when ambition ceases to burn, or romance to stir, and the highest cry of the human heart is for peace.

Men... look back on the children who were once themselves, and attempt to reconstruct them. But they can no longer think like the child.

A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over.

Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just and on the unjust.

That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you.

[On fishing:] Greatest rest in the world for the brain.

There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt.

I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.

A cat and a Bible, and nobody needs to be lonely.

It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.

every act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.

It was said of Miss Letitia that when money came into her possession it went out of circulation.

When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at once. The galled places still ache.

All houses in which men have lived and suffered and died are haunted houses.

Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it gains sight, it dies.

What a tragedy it was that the only thing age could offer to youth was its own experience, and that the experiences of others were never profitable.

Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it.

because we are always staring at the stars, we learn the shortness of our arms.

it is axiomatic with most writing people that there are no such things as perfect conditions for work.

Enemies are an indication of character.

... if one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love without remembering?

The one pleasure that never palls is the pleasure of not going to church.

pretense is the oil that lubricates society.

There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind!

Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.

There is a point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger.