Top 70 Mary Roberts Rinehart Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

2. “The world doesn’t come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

3. “The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

4. “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

5. “Every crucial experience can be regarded either as a setback, or the start of a wonderful new adventure, it depends on your perspective!”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

6. “A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it’s all over.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

7. “It’s money that brings trouble. It always has and it always will.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

8. “Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it gains sight, it dies.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

9. “Conflict is the very essence of life.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

10. “There is a point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

11. “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

12. “Old men make wars that young men may die.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

13. “Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

14. “When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at once. The galled places still ache.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

15. “It’s the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

16. “From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

17. “Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just and on the unjust.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

18. “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

19. “Enemies are an indication of character.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

20. “Curious, how one remembered Christmas. Perhaps because other days might appeal to the head, but this one appealed to the heart.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

21. “Men play harder than they work; women work harder than they play.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

22. “And there are no pockets in shrouds!”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

23. “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

24. “Love is like the measles, all the worse when it comes late.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

25. “It was said of Miss Letitia that when money came into her possession it went out of circulation.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

26. “Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

27. “It is only in his head that man is heroic; in the pit of his stomach he is always a coward.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

28. “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

29. “Well, that was life. It was an old tree, and the old passed on. Probably they did not mind. There came a time when all sap ran slowly, and the peace of age with all things behind it merged easily into the peace of death. The difficult thing was to be young.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

30. “All houses in which men have lived and suffered and died are haunted houses.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

31. “Young Doctor Arden was gong through the process of reorienting himself after a night’s sleep.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

32. “We are often miserable at our desk or typewriters, but not happy away from them.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

33. “Men love a joke – on the other fellow. But your really humorous woman loves a joke on herself.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

34. “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

35. “The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

36. “I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter...”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

37. “Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

38. “Natalie Spenser was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

39. “I have a great deal of mind. It takes a long time to change it.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

40. “A cat and a Bible, and nobody needs to be lonely.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

41. “That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don’t leave the world. It leaves you.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

42. “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

43. “Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

44. “I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

45. “It takes a good many years and some pretty hard knocks to make people tolerant.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

46. “Courage was America’s watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul – physical courage, not moral.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

47. “There is nothing for the modern man or woman to fear about most cases of cancer. Nothing except delay.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

48. “The one pleasure that never palls is the pleasure of not going to church.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

49. “To the bottle! In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

50. “Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I’m no hand for that. I’m a lawyer.”

— Mary Roberts Rinehart