My Story
A source page for quotes linked to Mary Roberts Rinehart.
“There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt.”
“Natalie Spenser was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess.”
“The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting.”
“Young Doctor Arden was gong through the process of reorienting himself after a night's sleep.”
“McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business.”
“These are times of action. Men think and then act; sometimes, indeed, they simply act.”
“every act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.”
“That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you.”
“because we are always staring at the stars, we learn the shortness of our arms.”
“there is no truly honest autobiography.”
“the calm of a place like Bellwood is the peace of death without the hope of resurrection.”
“From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.”
“Conflict is the very essence of life.”
“It is only in his head that man is heroic; in the pit of his stomach he is always a coward.”
“There is a point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger.”
“Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.”
“I have always regarded divorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but necessary.”
“Enemies are an indication of character.”
“[On fishing:] Greatest rest in the world for the brain.”
“my family, although it keeps its hair, turns gray early - a business asset but a social handicap.”
“All houses in which men have lived and suffered and died are haunted houses.”
“Men love a joke - on the other fellow. But your really humorous woman loves a joke on herself.”
“Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it gains sight, it dies.”
“[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.”
“when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.”
“Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.”
“A cat and a Bible, and nobody needs to be lonely.”
“I suppose that we are only young, Chris, so long as we can forget. After that we merely remember!”
“Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.”
“Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall.”
“I have a great deal of mind. It takes a long time to change it.”
“It was said of Miss Letitia that when money came into her possession it went out of circulation.”
“It's money that brings trouble. It always has and it always will.”