Rex Stout Quotes

46 quotes in 616 categories

• God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
• Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his…
• I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready…
• A hole in the ice is dangerous only to those who go skating.
• There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
• Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
• Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled…
• [A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
• Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia... ...Wolfe seemed absorbed in the pictures.…
• I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
• Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn't leak and no tire is flat.
• What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.
• A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
• As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.
• I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know. (Nero Wolfe)
• In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
• Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.
• MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
• The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold -- if you have one.
• We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.

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