Mary Roberts Rinehart Quotes & Sayings

I have always regarded divorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but necessary. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Men ... look back on the children who were once themselves, and attempt to reconstruct them. But they can no longer think like the child ... — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

All houses in which men have lived and suffered and died are haunted houses. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

Every writer knows the terror of an unexpected success. How to carry on? How to repeat it? — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

[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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I believe that the matter is automatically self-regulating; that those women who prefer the home and have an ability for it will eventually return to it; that others, like myself, will compromise; and that still others, temperamentally unfitted for it, will remain in the world to add to its productivity ... — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Every act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

There is a sort of melancholy pleasure to be had out of a funeral, with its pomp and ceremony, but I shrank from a death-bed. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Curious, how one remembered Christmas. Perhaps because other days might appeal to the head, but this one appealed to the heart. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just and on the unjust. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Her eyes filled.
"He forgot my birthday, two weeks ago," she said. "It was the first one he had ever forgotten, in nineteen of them."
Nineteen! Nineteen from thirty-five leaves sixteen! — Mary Roberts Rinehart

War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle. War is a boy being carried on a stretcher, looking up at God's blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorsa for the son she has given. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

[When working on a book] I have an almost complete detachment from the world I live in, a sort of armor against distraction. I talk to people, move about, appear on the surface much as usual. But later on I have only a confused memory of what has happened during that period. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

No one moved to get the whisky, from which I judged there were three pocket flasks ready for emergency. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

When knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I suppose it is because woman's courage is mental and man's physical, that in times of great strain women always make the better showing. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I have a great deal of mind. It takes a long time to change it. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I began to feel that if religion was either an illusion or a revelation, it was simpler to accept it as an illusion. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

As all women know, there are really no men at all. There are grown-up boys, and middle-aged boys, and elderly boys, and even sometimes very old boys. But the essential difference is simply exterior. Your man is always a boy. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter, — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

My family, although it keeps its hair, turns gray early - a business asset but a social handicap. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

The author lives with one foot in an everyday world and the other feeling about anxiously for a foothold in another more precarious one. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

[To her frequently needed plumber:] How would you like to be adopted? I'm sure it would be cheaper. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Young Doctor Arden was gong through the process of reorienting himself after a night's sleep. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

Because we are always staring at the stars, we learn the shortness of our arms. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I always said there were plenty of things going on here, right under our noses, that we couldn't see," she said, holding out her apron.

"I don't see with my nose," I remarked. "What have you got there? — Mary Roberts Rinehart

There are only two things to be done when a general is angry: One is to get behind the furniture and pretend one is not there; the other is to distract his mind. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

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

It's been my experience that the first few days of married life women are blind because they want to be and after that because they have to be. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Providence has a curious way of letting two lives run along, each apparently independent of the other. Parallel lines they seem, hopeless of meeting. Converging lines really, destined, through long ages, by every deed that has been done to meet as a certain point and there fuse. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind! — Mary Roberts Rinehart

All lives are so divided: a step back; a plunge; and then, in desperation and despair, a little climb up God's ladder. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

And there are no pockets in shrouds! — Mary Roberts Rinehart

The one pleasure that never palls is the pleasure of not going to church. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

The calm of a place like Bellwood is the peace of death without the hope of resurrection. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

There comes a time when ambition ceases to burn, or romance to stir, and the highest cry of the human heart is for peace. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Useless as a pulled tooth. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

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

When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at once. The galled places still ache. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

It is axiomatic with most writing people that there are no such things as perfect conditions for work. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

required less personal supervision, and as they both got their — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

A cat and a Bible, and nobody needs to be lonely. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Natalie Spenser was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

The only way to make a husband over according to one's ideas ... would be to adopt him at an early age, say four. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Some day some one will write a book about that frantic search of the creative worker for silence and freedom, not only from interruption but from the fear of interruption. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

[On fishing:] Greatest rest in the world for the brain. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

A man may shout the eternal virtues and be unheard forever, but if he babble nonsense in a wilderness it will travel around the world. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

Having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it gains sight, it dies. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

However, I was not long to rest in piece[sic], for in a few days I received a letter from Carter Brooks, as follows:
DEAR BARBARA: It was sweet of you to write me so promptly, although I confess to being rather astonished as well as delighted at being called "Dearest." The signature too was charming, "Ever thine." But, dear child, won't you write at once and tell me why the waist, bust and hip measurements? And the request to have them really low in the neck? Ever thine, CARTER.
It will be perceived that I had sent him the letter to mother, by mistake. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

Conflict is the very essence of life. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Men play harder than they work; women work harder than they play. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

She had the theory of youth about love, that it was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Enemies are an indication of character. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Love is like the measles, all the worse when it comes late. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

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? — Mary Roberts Rinehart

There is no truly honest autobiography. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

If one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love without remembering? — Mary Roberts Rinehart

The greatest weapon in the world ... is ridicule. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue... — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Old men make wars that young men may die. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. — Mary Roberts Rinehart