Quote

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.

Rex Stout

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Lying
Comes
Tell
Renouncing
Enough
Shrewd
Men
Gracefully
Time
Renounce
Recognize
Unless

More quotes by Rex Stout

Image
As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout
Image
Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people.
Rex Stout
Image
I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness.
Rex Stout
Image
Opinions, from experts, cost money.
Rex Stout
Image
A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.
Rex Stout
Image
I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.
Rex Stout
Image
I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.
Rex Stout
Image
Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.
Rex Stout
Image
I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
Rex Stout
Image
Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
Rex Stout
Image
I understand the technique of eccentricity it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.
Rex Stout
Image
We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
Image
The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
Rex Stout
Image
There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions - is he tall, is he short? - he had better quit.
Rex Stout
Image
A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
Rex Stout
Image
It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
Rex Stout
Image
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
Image
Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
Rex Stout
Image
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
Image
Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
Rex Stout