The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Rex Stout

There are two kinds of statistics the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.

french, language, nero-wolfe, prejudices

I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of the human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it.

archie-goodwin, mystery

Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It’s childish.

detective, mystery

No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.

Well.” Wolfe was judicious. “You were not under oath. The police have been lied to informally many times by many people, including me. The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly valued and frequently exercised.

To assert dignity is to lose it.

dignity, nero-wolfe

Every man alive is half idiot & half hero. Only heroes could survive in this maelstrom & only idiots would want to.

cynical, hero, inspirational

It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous

craft, excellence, sherlock-holmes, writing

When an international financier is confronted by a holdup man with a gun, he automatically hands over not only his money and jewelry but also his shirt and pants, because it doesn’t occur to him that a robber might draw the line somewhere.

banditry, finance

We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.

folly, foolishness, luck, merits, nero-wolfe, vainer, vainity, wisdom, wise

Yeah. I’m the fly in the soup. I don’t like it any better than you do. Flies don’t like being swamped in soup, especially when it’s hot.

fly, problems, soup