Mary Roberts Rinehart Quotes

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.

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.

Enemies are an indication of character.

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

Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall.

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.

We are often miserable at our desk or typewriters, but not happy away from them.

Conflict is the very essence of life.

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

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

there is no truly honest autobiography.

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

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

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

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

the theater is the only money-making business I know in which haste apparently rules from first to last.

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

To men and women who want to do things, there is nothing quite so driving as the force of an imprisoned ego. . . . All genius comes from this class.

Useless as a pulled tooth.

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

[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.

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?

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.

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.

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

To the bottle! In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle.

These are times of action. Men think and then act; sometimes, indeed, they simply act.

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

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

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!]

Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.

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

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.

the calm of a place like Bellwood is the peace of death without the hope of resurrection.

I have always regarded divorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but necessary.

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.

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

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.

From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.

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.

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

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.

I suppose that we are only young, Chris, so long as we can forget. After that we merely remember!

... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.

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.

[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.

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