Rex Stout quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Rex Stout

Rex Stout Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Rex Stout on Wise Famous Quotes.

That's ill-advised. More, it's puerile.

I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.

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.

The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off

There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick.

I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.

The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold
if you have one.

Everyone has something they don't want anyone to see; that is one of the functions of a home, to provide a spot to keep such things.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

Dignities are like faces; no two are the same.

Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.

Fritz giggled. He's the only man I've ever known who could giggle without giving you doubts about his fundamentals.

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

This is the unluckiest day I've had since my rich uncle changed doctors.

As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter.

Archie.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Do I ever intrude in your private affairs?'
'Yes, sir. Frequently. But you think you don't, so go right ahead.

I was yelling at a dame with a frontage that would have made a good bookshelf.

No. The morning will do. You're impetuous." He looked at the wall clock. Fritz would come any minute to announce dinner. "Can you get Saul now?

Invade a man's privacy and then put the burden on him.

Please?" "Ridiculous," he said curtly,

I'm not hysterical." "Of course you are. All women are. Their moments of calm are merely recuperative periods between outbursts. I

No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket or at least had been fooling around with timetables.

The least offensive way of refusing a request is not to let it be made.

But he wouldn't find me in the office, sitting there like patience in the hoosegow.

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.

MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.

Everything in a story should be credible.

A hole in the ice is dangerous only to those who go skating.

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

To assert dignity is to lose it.

As sure as my name is Archie and not Archibald, I would have shot that goddamn orangutan dead in his tracks.

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.

Of course, a hole in the ice offers peril only to those who go skating.

Dived through the rain across the sidewalk, found

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

But I had long since learned from Wolfe that the corner the light doesn't reach is the one the dime rolled to.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

I think the police and the FBI are quite capable of sacrificing the rights of a private citizen to what they consider the public interest.

I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know.
(Nero Wolfe)

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

Enforced courtesy is worse than none.

Can Mr. Wolfe help it if an attractive young fellow insists on coming to cry on his shoulder?

The passions smothered by modem civilization are doubly ferocious when awakened,

But Mr. Cramer,." Wolfe protested, "is it my fault if destiny likes this address?

You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.

God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.

It strikes me, sir, that you are nearing the point where even a grateful American might tell you to go to the devil.-Nero Wolfe to an FBI Agent

More people saying what they believe would be a great improvement. Because I often do I am unfit for common intercourse.-Nero Wolfe in Blood Will Tell

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

The incredible thing happens at the beginning of the story always, you notice, not the end. A Sherlock Holmes story is never a trick story.

But when you're there, there you are, and

I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

Opinions, from experts, cost money.

The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach.

To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

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

Nothing is quite so uncomfortable as a loose conscience.

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

I have undertaken to to find an explanation for something that can't possibly be explained-Nero Wolfe

Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.

Everything from war to picnics depends on the weather, as Wolfe remarked

You know what my boss says? He says that skepticism is a good watchdog if you know when to take the leash off.

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.

What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.

He's sick." "What with?" "Sitzenlust. Chronic. The opposite of wanderlust.

There has never been a smoother operation since Whosis scattered the dust on the temple floor.

To drink champagne with a blonde at one elbow and a brunette at the other gives a man a sense of well-being, and

There's nothing as safe as ignorance or as dangerous.

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.

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

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality

He was as indignant and irritated as if he had been served a veal cutlet with an egg perched on it.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

Only the man that knows to little, knows too much. Nero Wolfe

To anyone seeing him but not knowing him, Saul Panzer was nothing but a little guy with a big nose who never quite caught up with his shaving.

man with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

Loyalty is a very fine thing, but it shouldn't be allowed to get the bit between its teeth. I

She's capable of anything, and she's as deft as a bear's tongue.

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.

When I consider myself superior to anyone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than his skin.

If you collected all the good faith in this room right now you might fill a teaspoon.

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.

You can't base your actions on the theory that anyone you don't keep your eye on is apt to get killed.

War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread.

The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.

He growled. "You know quite well that that locution is vile.

If you want to be contentious wait until you learn what you have to contend with. It works better that way.

The avoidance of idiocy should be the primary and constant concern of every intelligent person, - Nero Wolfe

There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living - cook books and detective stories.

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