Mary Roberts Rinehart Quotes - Page 3

War is a thing of fearful and curious anomalies ... It has shown that government by men only is not an appeal to reason, but an appeal to arms; that on women, without a voice to protest, must fall the burden. It is easier to die than to send a son to death.

I believe that the matter is automatically self-regulating; that those women who prefer the home and have an ability for it will eventually return to it; that others, like myself, will compromise; and that still others, temperamentally unfitted for it, will remain in the world to add to its productivity.

War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle. War is a boy being carried on a stretcher, looking up at God’s blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorsa for the son she has given.

there is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.

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.

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

The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting.

Every writer knows the terror of an unexpected success. How to carry on? How to repeat it?

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 only way to make a husband over according to one's ideas ... would be to adopt him at an early age, say four.

[The writer] wants both to do the best possible work and also to reach the largest possible audience. The result is a fairly normal condition of discouragement.

Men love a joke - on the other fellow. But your really humorous woman loves a joke on herself.

my family, although it keeps its hair, turns gray early - a business asset but a social handicap.

There is nothing for the modern man or woman to fear about most cases of cancer. Nothing except delay.

I began to feel that if religion was either an illusion or a revelation, it was simpler to accept it as an illusion.

Politics is still the man's game. The women are allowed to do the chores, the dirty work, and now and then--but only occasionally--one is present at some secret conference or other. But it's not the rule. They can go out and get the vote, if they can and will; they can collect money, they can be grateful for being permitted to work. But that is all.

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.

Some day some one will write a book about that frantic search of the creative worker for silence and freedom, not only from interruption but from the fear of interruption.

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

Well, that was life. It was an old tree, and the old passed on. Probably they did not mind. There came a time when all sap ran slowly, and the peace of age with all things behind it merged easily into the peace of death. The difficult thing was to be young.

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.

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

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

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

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