Josephine Tey Quotes & Sayings

The quality of Scotchness was a highly concentrated essence, and should always be diluted. As an ingredient it was admirable; neat, it was as abominable as ammonia. — Josephine Tey

She had bought herself a fashionable hat for the occasion, but had done nothing to accommodate it; so that the hat perched on her bird's-nest of ginger hair as if it had dropped there from an upper window as she walked along the street. She was wearing her normal expression of pleased bewilderment and no make-up. — Josephine Tey

The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper, the sale of a house, the price of a ring. — Josephine Tey

And Hopkins, seeing that Tisdall was unaware of Grant's identity, rushed in with glad maliciousness. "That is Scotland Yard," he said. "Inspector Grant. Never had an unsolved crime to his name." "I hope you write my obituary," Grant said. "I hope I do!" the journalist said, with fervor. — Josephine Tey

She'll never ride," Eleanor said. She can't even bump the saddle yet."
"Perhaps loony people can't ride," Ruth suggested.
"Ruth," Bee said, with vigour. "The pupils at the Manor are not lunatic. They are not even mentally deficient. They are just 'difficult.'"
"Ill-adjusted is the technical description," Simon said.
"Well, they behave like lunatics. If you behave like a lunatic how is anyone to tell that you're not one? — Josephine Tey

Most people's first books are their best anyways. It's the one they wanted most to write. — Josephine Tey

She would go away deep into the green and white and yellow countryside, and smell the may and lie in the grass and feel the world turning on its axis, and remember that it was a very large world, and that College griefs were mild and bitter but soon over and that in the Scale of Things they were undeniably Very Small Beer. — Josephine Tey

A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy. — Josephine Tey

Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. — Josephine Tey

I have a palate, Williams. A precious possession. And I have no intention of prostituting it to pickles. — Josephine Tey

Alan Grant: "There are ... far too many words written. Millions and millions of them pouring from the presses every minute. It's a horrible thought."
The Midget (his nurse): "You sound constipated. — Josephine Tey

Fasting was good for the imagination but bad for logic. — Josephine Tey

How old was More when Richard succeeded?
He was five.
When that dramatic council scene had taken place at the Tower, Thomas More had been five years old. He had been only eight when Richard died at Bosworth.
Everything in that history had been hearsay. — Josephine Tey

Nothing in this world came out of satisfaction. Except the human race. — Josephine Tey

There was no room in his life for Marta, and none in her life for him; but it was a pity, all the same. — Josephine Tey

There is a limit to one's capacity for rows, you know. There comes a time when you're only too ready to sacrifice something for a quiet life. — Josephine Tey

A man may own a ship, but unless he is captain of a crew he goes where the ship goes. — Josephine Tey

He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it. — Josephine Tey

It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in mirrors and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable. — Josephine Tey

Had their physical attractions proved insufficient because she had unconsciously asked more from them than they were able to give? — Josephine Tey

Truth isn't in accounts but in account-books. — Josephine Tey

There are far too many people born into the world, and far too many words written. Millions and millions of them pouring from the presses every minute. It's a horrible thought." "You sound constipated," said The Midget. — Josephine Tey

Nothing great ever came out of common sense. — Josephine Tey

Truth is often terribly thin, don't you think? — Josephine Tey

It was pleasant to talk shop again; to use that elliptical, allusive speech that one uses only with another of one's trade. — Josephine Tey

Before night,' as Nanny used to say of too exuberant children. — Josephine Tey

Ruth puts in all the tiddley bits and the expression and doesn't mind how many wrong notes she strikes, but with Jane it is accuracy or nothing. I don't know which Chopin would have hated more, Eleanor said, folding bread and butter into a thickness that would match her appetite. — Josephine Tey

Weak people can be very stubborn. — Josephine Tey

Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write! — Josephine Tey

Horse sense is the instinct that keeps horses from betting on men. — Josephine Tey

A man--Buck--wrote a vindication in the seventeenth-century, and Horace Walpole in the eighteenth, and someone named Markham in the nineteenth ... "

"And who in the twentieth?"

"No one that I know of."

"Then what's wrong with your doing it?"

"But it wont' be the same, don't you see? It won't be a great discovery."

He said it in capitals. A GREAT DISCOVERY.

Grant smiled at him.

"Oh, come, you can't expect to pick GREAT DISCOVERIES off bushes. If you can't be a pioneer what's wrong with leading a crusade?"

"A crusade?

"Certainly."

"Against what?"

"Tonypandy. — Josephine Tey

The worst of pushing horrible things down into one's subconscious is that when they pop up again they are as fresh as if they had been in a refrigerator. You haven't allowed time to get at them to-to mould them over a little. — Josephine Tey

But no, Potticary, poor fool, brushed his boots for love of it. He probably had a slave mentality; but had never read enough for it to worry him. — Josephine Tey

That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight. — Josephine Tey

But it was never possible to forget that Searle was in a room. Why? she kept asking herself. Or rather, why not? — Josephine Tey

You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there. — Josephine Tey

It is not possible to love and be wise. — Josephine Tey

I expect this is what death is like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable. — Josephine Tey

What had he ever wanted that he could not buy? And if that wasn't riches he didn't know what was. — Josephine Tey

In hospitals there is no time off for good behavior. — Josephine Tey

The jury, having swallowed at one nauseating gulp the business of viewing the body, had settled into their places with that air of conscious importance and simulated modesty which belongs to those initiated into a mystery. — Josephine Tey

It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed.
Very odd, isn't it. — Josephine Tey

Next Christmas he was going to open this shabby sack of hers ... and put something in the money compartment. She would fritter it away, of course, in small unimportances; so that in the end she would not know what she had done with it; but perhaps a series of small satisfactions scattered like sequins over the texture of everyday life was of greater worth than the academic satisfaction of owning a collection of fine objects at the back of a drawer. — Josephine Tey

Grant had dealt too long with the human intelligence to accept as truth someone's report of someone's report of what that someone remembered to have seen or been told. — Josephine Tey

If there is anything that is likely to put me to sleep," he said, "it would be an English history book. So you can hold hands with a clear conscience." "I'm going with Nurse Burrows." "You can still hold hands." "I've no patience with you," she said patiently and faded backwards into the gloom. — Josephine Tey

The trouble with you, dear, is that you think an angel of the Lord as a creature with wings, whereas he is probably a scruffy little man with a bowler hat. — Josephine Tey

If Richard had not made friends he had certainly influenced people. — Josephine Tey

There is a little phrase commonly used in police work that says, "in accordance with the evidence." You say that over six times a day as a grace before and after meals, and perhaps it will keep your feet on the ground and stop you ending up thinking you're Frederick the Great or a hedgehog or something. — Josephine Tey

Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose. — Josephine Tey

Lack of education is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive. — Josephine Tey

If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable. — Josephine Tey

Someone had said that if you thought about the unthinkable long enough it became quite reasonable. — Josephine Tey

Did no one, any more, no one in all this wide world, change their record now and then? Was everyone nowadays thirled to a formula? Authors wrote so much to a pattern that their public expected it. The public talked about "a new Silas Weekly" or "a new Lavinia Fitch" exactly as they talked about "a new brick" or "a new hairbrush." They never said "a new book by" whoever it might be. Their interest was not in the book but in its newness. They knew quite well what the book would be like. — Josephine Tey

The more windows on the world a policeman has the better he is likely to be at his job, — Josephine Tey

Doormats. It was true that actors had a perception, an understanding of human motive, that normal people lacked. It had nothing to do with intelligence, and very little to do with education. — Josephine Tey

Nothing puts things in perspective as quickly as a mountain. — Josephine Tey

He is much too personable to be wholesome. — Josephine Tey

The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. — Josephine Tey

It would do her good to have some demons to fight, to be swung out in space and held over some bottomless pit now and then. — Josephine Tey

After three days without one, the desire to read a newspaper vanished. And really, one was happier without. — Josephine Tey

What happened in 1603?" Grant asked, his mind still on Tyrrel. "We had the Scots tied to our tails for good." "Better than having them at our throats every five minutes. — Josephine Tey

She put her cup down and sighed again with pleasure. "I can't think how the Nonconformists have failed to discover coffee."
"Discover it?"
"Yes. As a snare. It does far more for one than drink. And yet no one preaches about it, or signs pledges about it. Five mouthfuls and the world looks rosy. — Josephine Tey

There were people whose only interest in life was writing letters. To the newspapers, to authors, to strangers, to City Councils, to the police. It did not much matter to whom; the satisfaction of writing seemed to be all. — Josephine Tey

One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing. — Josephine Tey

She was afraid of what she called the young man's "personableness." She distrusted it for itself, and hated it as a potential threat to her house. — Josephine Tey

The light died on the window-sill as the last survivor of a charge dies on the enemy parapet, murdered but glorious. — Josephine Tey

The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthly and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas's fault that its steam provided the only uprising element in the picture. If Silas could have discovered a brand of steam that steamed downwards, Silas would have introduced it. — Josephine Tey

Lack of education," old Mrs. Sharpe said thoughtfully, "is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive. They had no resources at all. — Josephine Tey

One of the secrets of a successful life is to know how to be a little profitably crazy. — Josephine Tey

For Liz, all American men were divided into two classes: those who treated you as if you were a frail old lady, and those who treated you as if you were just frail. — Josephine Tey

That is why historians surprise me. They seem to have no talent for the likeliness of any situation. They see history like a peepshow; with two-dimensional figures against a distant background. — Josephine Tey