Top 40 Patricia Wentworth Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Take things as they come. Take things as they are. What does it matter? There’s one end to everything.”

— Patricia Wentworth

2. “When there is too much to say it is easier to say nothing at all.”

— Patricia Wentworth

3. “Too much information can be as disconcerting as too little.”

— Patricia Wentworth

4. “It is always better to say too little than too much.”

— Patricia Wentworth

5. “Most of the things one worries about never happen.”

— Patricia Wentworth

6. “Things you can’t understand are always the hardest to bear. To know why is the first step to consolation.”

— Patricia Wentworth

7. “It is the man who is sure of himself who disregards the opinion of the world. To be sure is to have power.”

— Patricia Wentworth

8. “She moved like clouds, like water, like anything lovely and effortless and free.”

— Patricia Wentworth

9. “Men could be drunk with pride, with passion, or with power. They could be drunken with hatred, or with the lust of gain.”

— Patricia Wentworth

10. “The fact is, for most of us, what happens to ourselves is so much more important than what happens to other people that the smallest mote in our own eye will prevent us from being unduly harrowed by someone else’s beam.”

— Patricia Wentworth

11. “She was music, poetry, and the enchantment which lies just over the edge of thought.”

— Patricia Wentworth

12. “Mary Stuart wrote, ‘My end is in my beginning.’ It is easier to agree with her than to decide what is the beginning, and what is the end.”

— Patricia Wentworth

13. “Any road is bound to arrive somewhere if you follow it far enough.”

— Patricia Wentworth

14. “When you’ve just made the most complete fool of yourself, you feel the need of a specially high horse to ride.”

— Patricia Wentworth

15. “The most trying moments in human experience were those in which there was nothing to be done except to wait.”

— Patricia Wentworth

16. “A lie that is half a truth is ever the hardest to fight.”

— Patricia Wentworth

17. “You can’t do such a lot and do it all so well and have much time left for the ordinary human feelings.”

— Patricia Wentworth

18. “Anger was both a disfiguring and a revealing passion.”

— Patricia Wentworth

19. “Emotion which you do not share can become intolerable.”

— Patricia Wentworth

20. “Children want one thing at a time, and want that one thing passionately.”

— Patricia Wentworth

21. “There are moments when everyone in the world is the friend of your heart and you must share its joy.”

— Patricia Wentworth

22. “She was a little bit of a thing with a light untidy fluff of hair and a nose which went pink in moments of emotion. It was pink now and it quivered. She dabbed aimlessly at her hair and three of the remaining pins fell out. William stooped to pick them up, and wished he hadn’t. He said he thought he would go to bed, and went.”

— Patricia Wentworth

23. “Henry, for heaven’s sake! You can’t propose when I’m fainting!”

— Patricia Wentworth

24. “Money’s a very serious thing – especially when you haven’t got any.”

— Patricia Wentworth

25. “Nobody likes to be accused of a virtue.”

— Patricia Wentworth

26. “Being in a rage was rather like being out in a thunderstorm – you couldn’t hear yourself think.”

— Patricia Wentworth

27. “My dear father always said that when everybody had a telephone nobody would have any manners, because there wouldn’t be time for them. And of course he was perfectly right...”

— Patricia Wentworth

28. “Love and a cold cannot be hid. It is, I believe, a Spanish proverb.”

— Patricia Wentworth

29. “She would prefer a novel in which the characters had at least heard of the ten commandments and did not begin drinking at ten in the morning after having kept it up for most of the night. Their behaviour under this alcoholic stimulus she considered to be totally lacking in interest.”

— Patricia Wentworth

30. “Anyone who pretends not to be interested in money is either a fool or a knave.”

— Patricia Wentworth

31. “The fact is, people who don’t have any misfortunes are very irritating to their neighbours. No opportunities for popping in with condolences and new-laid eggs. No visits to the afflicted. No opportunities for the milk of human kindness to flow. Naturally it doesn’t.”

— Patricia Wentworth

32. “It’s surprising how soon you can get used to having money. It’s much easier than getting used to not having it.”

— Patricia Wentworth

33. “There’s a general consensus of opinion that people in love are apt to look silly – except to each other.”

— Patricia Wentworth

34. “East, west, home’s best.’ The words rang in his mind. There wasn’t any place like the one where the world had come alive to you, where you knew every stick and stone, every man, woman and child, where you could look around you and know that the men of your blood had had their.”

— Patricia Wentworth

35. “You cannot divide minds into sexes. Each human being presents an individual problem.”

— Patricia Wentworth

36. “I shall want heaps and heaps of tea. The blow has driven me to drink.”

— Patricia Wentworth

37. “I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure.”

— Patricia Wentworth

38. “I told you she had an inconsequent mind. That’s putting it much too mildly. When it comes to anything like evidence, she hasn’t really got a mind at all – she just dives into a sort of lumber-room and brings out odds and ends.”

— Patricia Wentworth

39. “Her name is Maud Silver. Louisa says she has solved many difficult cases besides being an extremely expert knitter.”

— Patricia Wentworth

40. “One cannot withdraw from the life of the community. Injury to one member of it cannot fail to be the concern of all.”

— Patricia Wentworth

41. “Once a suggestion has entered the general atmosphere of human thought, it is very difficult to neutralise it.”

— Patricia Wentworth

42. “Mary didn’t know just what prompted her answer. She was the most candid of women, but you don’t tell a man everything where another woman is concerned.”

— Patricia Wentworth

43. “Fancy going out into the world under the impression that you can always have your own way! Would anything be more likely to lead to disaster?”

— Patricia Wentworth

44. “A good many established writers seem to have the feeling that some day they are going to be found out, revealed as frauds.”

— Patricia Wentworth

45. “Obstinacy is an impediment to the free exercise of thought. It paralyses the intelligence. Conclusions based upon preconceived ideas are valueless.”

— Patricia Wentworth