228 Quotes by Rex Stout

Courtesy is one's own affair, but decency is a debt to life

That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

... nature has arranged that when you overcome a given inertia the resulting momentum is proportionate. If I were to begin borrowing money I would end by devising means of persuading the Secretary of the Treasury to lend me the gold reserve.

Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

As I trotted down the hall, Fritz was holding the street door open and three people were entering in the shape of a sandwich – a dick, Zorka, and another dick.

I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.

Chili is one of the great peasant foods. It is one of the few contributions America has made to world cuisine. Eaten with corn bread, sweet onion, sour cream, it contains all five of the elements deemed essential by the sages of the Orient: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter.