Top 50 Rhys Bowen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it right. Wrong’s wrong, even in a ruddy war.”

— Rhys Bowen

2. “I know ladies don’t sweat, but something was running down my face in great rivulets.”

— Rhys Bowen

3. “We should all have personal hot air balloons and drift serenely through the clouds.”

— Rhys Bowen

4. “My teachers at school said I had a good brain and wanted me to go to university, but my mother thought it was a silly idea. She said too much education was not good for women. They needed to know how to run a home and a family, and being educated only made them discontent. I’m afraid she’s hopelessly old-fashioned in her ideas.”

— Rhys Bowen

5. “The baroness swept into the room like an avenging black angel, her cape streaming out behind her. If looks could kill, we’d have been sprawled on the carpet.”

— Rhys Bowen

6. “If you’re worried about your very life, the last thing you want is small talk.”

— Rhys Bowen

7. “All is well. We are tested and we survive, and life will be good again.”

— Rhys Bowen

8. “Necessities for all manner of healing in the herb garden: Hyssop, Wormwood, Rue, Coriander, Pasqueflower, Rosemary, St John’s Wort, Costmary, Lady’s Mantle, Lady’s Bedstraw, Angelica, Heartsease, Lily of the Valley, Marigold, Milk Thistle, Thyme, Sweet Woodruff. To these I plan to add, as time permits: Wood Betony, Comfrey, Coltsfoot, Cowslip, Hawthorn, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Meadowsweet, Sage, Valerian, Yarrow and Winter Savory.”

— Rhys Bowen

9. “Full of fun, over-the-top characters and witty prose, with a touch of gay romance that is equally pleasing to straight readers. The Edwin Drood Murders is the perfect mystery for educated, intelligent readers.”

— Rhys Bowen

10. “As my dear Baroness Lehzen used to say, ‘Enough is as good as a feast.”

— Rhys Bowen

11. “Idealistic? Ruddy stupid, if you’ll pardon the language, miss,: Mr Roberts said. “All this talk about power for the people and down with the ruling classes and everyone should govern themselves. It can never happen, I told him. The ruling classes are born to rule. They know how to do it. You take a person like you or me and you put us up there to run a country and we’d make a ruddy mess of it.”

— Rhys Bowen

12. “I will not be bullied or dictated to. I’m not a child any more, and I’m prepared to make my own way and my own mistakes if necessary.”

— Rhys Bowen

13. “There is nothing worse than speeches about someone you don’t know, made by someone you don’t know.”

— Rhys Bowen

14. “On this occasion it was a tea party. Cook had been baking all morning: scones and sponge cakes and shortbreads so that the kitchen was full of wonderful aromas. And all afternoon she had been making little tea sandwiches – cucumber, egg and cress, smoked salmon.”

— Rhys Bowen

15. “When the world has gone mad, we must help each other when we can.”

— Rhys Bowen

16. “Why is it that there is this misconception that dark equals good. That only applies to chocolate.”

— Rhys Bowen

17. “You know what rumors are like-like a jar full of moths. Once they escape, they’re all over the place.”

— Rhys Bowen

18. “I decided never to eat bacon again. But I happen to adore bacon, so that didn’t last long.”

— Rhys Bowen

19. “There’s nothing wrong with hunting, in its place. But there are many preferable occupations when in the presence of a young woman.”

— Rhys Bowen

20. “How quickly life can change. Well, maybe it was time that it changed again. I was in a beautiful place, staying with a kind woman, and I was going to enjoy myself, whatever the outcome was.”

— Rhys Bowen

21. “None of this nine or ten nonsense and I don’t care what the parish priest says. There will soon be so many people on this planet that it will be standing room only.”

— Rhys Bowen

22. “At least he was useful in some ways. He made good cheese.”

— Rhys Bowen

23. “At last he said, “I’ve been fourteen years on the police force. I’ve learned from seasoned veterans. I’ve handled all types of criminal cases. But my wife, newly arrived from the backwoods of Ireland, manages to tie up all my unsolved cases for me with apparently no effort at all. I should just quit my job and stay home looking after the babies while you go out to work for us.”

— Rhys Bowen

24. “A man in love does not notice the cut of the dress, but rather a face of a beloved.”

— Rhys Bowen

25. “I’m teaching you how to survive in a difficult world. You can’t be under your parents’ thumb forever. You have to take charge of your own life now you’re going to be twenty-one.”

— Rhys Bowen

26. “But flirting does not come easily to someone brought up in a remote castle with tartan wallpaper in the bathrooms, bagpipes at dawn and men who wear kilts.”

— Rhys Bowen

27. “They don’t hang dukes, darling. He’d be let off by reason of insanity. Everyone knows the upper classes are batty.”

— Rhys Bowen

28. “Fill in?” she demanded. “For the weekend?” She winced as if each of these words were causing her pain. “I am afraid we do not handle that sort of thing.” By that she implied that I had requested a stripper straight from the Casbah. So.”

— Rhys Bowen

29. “I can come up to town, Belinda. It’s not as if I’m going to darkest Africa.”

— Rhys Bowen

30. “Then how can prayers be answered if you do not call upon the saints to help? God is obviously too busy to do everything alone.”

— Rhys Bowen

31. “I realised that everyone present resented the loss of the Hall as much as my father had done. It represented the passing of an old way of life, of the security of knowing one’s place. I found it very touching.”

— Rhys Bowen

32. “Tiny finger sandwiches, biscuits and cakes, grapes and tangerines and of course my scones with jam and cream. Mr Phelps and Jimmy came to help me as I made shortbreads, ginger biscuits from Germany that were a favourite of the queen, macaroons and lemon curd tarts. At the last minute, we prepared cucumber, egg and cress, and smoked salmon sandwiches, wrapping them immediately into damp linen napkins to keep them moist. Flasks of tea were prepared.”

— Rhys Bowen

33. “When the world has gone mad, we must help each other when we can. Most of my neighbours are good and share what little they have.”

— Rhys Bowen

34. “Sure. Why not?” he said. “A cup of tea. That’s what everyone drank all through the war. A bomb was dropped and everyone said, ‘It’s all right. Have a cup of tea.’” And he laughed.”

— Rhys Bowen

35. “But it was that core group of popular girls who moved in a pack, like wolves, and loved to pick on anyone weaker than them who made it quite clear that I did not belong.”

— Rhys Bowen

36. “Mummy always had French maids, and Daddy always chased them. It kept their marriage happy.”

— Rhys Bowen

37. “It had been unusually hot all summer. Ben Cresswell could feel the sun scorching his thighs through his cricket whites as he sat on the clubhouse veranda, waiting for his turn at bat. Colonel Huntley sat beside him, mopping his red and sweaty face. He was wearing pads because he was next up at bat. He wasn’t as good a batsman as Ben, but he was team captain, and in village cricket, seniority often took precedence over ability. Only.”

— Rhys Bowen

38. “He was the sort of languid and elegant young man one would expect to find at a country house party, playing croquet with Bertie Wooster. Frightfully good fun, but not too many brains.”

— Rhys Bowen

39. “Not to marry?” “Someday maybe.” I blushed when I said this, glad it was dark. “But not until I know who I am and what I want.”

— Rhys Bowen

40. “When I awoke the next morning I looked out at a landscape blotted out by mist and the first thought that came to me was, I wonder who is going to be killed today?”

— Rhys Bowen

41. “You cannot live someone else’s life. Your life is what you make of it. You have to decide what you want.”

— Rhys Bowen

42. “A body? Of a person? Dead?” “Bodies usually are. And this one was very dead indeed.”

— Rhys Bowen

43. “Experience makes one come to terms with life, to be at one with the mind and the heart. And most people are suffering in some way.”

— Rhys Bowen

44. “Pamela looked at his retreating back with admiration. He represented the backbone of Britain at this moment. A skinny, awkward bookworm, yet determined to keep going for as long as it took to defeat Hitler.”

— Rhys Bowen

45. “It’s hard to imagine there is a God at the moment, isn’t it?” he said. “If I was watching this from up in heaven, I’d want to step in and put a stop to it.”

— Rhys Bowen

46. “I really should be getting home. The family will be waiting to see me,” Pamela said.”

— Rhys Bowen

47. “The only stories worth reading have happy endings.”

— Rhys Bowen

48. “We just have to make the best of things and be happy with what we’ve got.”

— Rhys Bowen

49. “She still called it dinner, although the vicar had tried to educate her for years that the working classes had their dinner at midday, but the upper classes had luncheon.”

— Rhys Bowen

50. “September 1939 From: His Majesty’s Government To: Civilian Population of Great Britain For the duration of the war, the following Seven Rules are to be observed at all times. Do not waste food. Do not talk to strangers. Keep all information to yourself. Always listen to government instructions and carry them out. Report anything suspicious to the police. Do not spread rumours. Lock away anything that might help the enemy if we are invaded.”

— Rhys Bowen