"We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits."
- Rex Stout
"When an international financier is confronted by a holdup man with a gun, he automatically hands over not only his money and jewelry but also his shirt and pants, because it doesn't occur to him that ..."
"It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous "
"Every man alive is half idiot & half hero. Only heroes could survive in this maelstrom & only idiots would want to."
"To assert dignity is to lose it."
"No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully."
"Well." Wolfe was judicious. "You were not under oath. The police have been lied to informally many times by many people, including me. The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly v..."
"A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went ..."
"There are two kinds of statistics the kind you look up and the kind you make up."