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.

Patience and endurance were not virtues in a woman; they were necessities, forced on her. Perhaps some day things would change and women would renounce them. They would rise up and say: 'We are not patient. We will endure no more.' Then what would happen to the world?

Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The greatest weapon in the world ... is ridicule.

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

I have never learned to say 'gas' for gasoline. It seems to me as absurd as if I were to say 'but' for butter.

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

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

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!]

Men play harder than they work; women work harder than they play.

my crime books are actually novels and are written as such. One might even say that each one is really two novels, one of which is the story I tell the reader, and the other the buried story I know and let slip now and then into a clue to whet the reader's interest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

there is no truly honest autobiography.