Rex Stout Short Quotes

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

Rex Stout
What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

Rex Stout
There isn't a generation gap between you and me — there's two.

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

Rex Stout
My God you love to get them, and good Lord you hate to answer them.

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

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

Rex Stout
There are numerous layers of honesty, and the deepest should not have a monopoly.

Rex Stout
A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

Rex Stout
No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket.

Rex Stout
It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous scene.

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

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

Rex Stout
The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.

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

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

Rex Stout
Statistics show that seventy-four per cent of wives open letters, with or without a teakettle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rex Stout
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.

Rex Stout
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.

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

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

Rex Stout
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.

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

Rex Stout
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.

Rex Stout