Quotes from Eric Ambler

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

International big business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood!

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life but the same thing can be said of the most weak.

But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town.

Governments had risen and fallen; men and women had worked, had starved, had made speeches, had fought, had been tortured, had died. Hope had come and gone, a fugitive in the scented bosom of illusion. Men had learned to sniff the heady dreamstuff of the soul and wait impassively while the lathes turned the guns for their destruction. And through those years, Dimitrios had lived and breathed and come to terms with his strange gods.

Yes, Mr Latimer, most of us go through life without knowing what we want of it. But Dimitrios, you know, was not like that. Dimitrios knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted money and he wanted power.

Tweeds, he soon found, are not in warm weather the ideal clothes for mountain climbing, for that was what his progress soon became. The track grew almost precipitous and he was still further hindered by the loose surface and his package of food and wine. He had been climbing for half an hour when he stopped, ate his lunch, drank his wine and smoked a pipe. Some forty minutes later, much refreshed and free of encumbrance, he continued the ascent in better style.

Vociferous international audiences thronged the streets. Actually, it is nothing more nor less than an Italian version of Birmingham.

in to the pier

For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as a superhuman Law, it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

Martaval okumak f?rsat?n varken asla yalan söyleme.

The logic of Michelangelo's David, Beethoven's quartets and Einstein's physics had been replaced by that of the Stock Exchange Year Book and Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Only an idiot believes he can write the truth about himself.

Banking!" Mathis was saying. "What is it but usury? Bankers are money lenders, usurers. But because they lend other people's money or money that does not exist, they have a pretty name. They are still usurers. Once, usury was a mortal sin and an abomination, and to be a usurer was to be a criminal for whom there was a prison cell. To-day the usurers are the gods of the earth and the only mortal sin is to be poor.

One goes through life like a flower with its face turned to the sun, ever seeking, ever hoping, wanting to trust others, but afraid to do so. How much better if we trusted one another, if we saw only the good things, the finer things in our fellow creatures! How much better if we were frank and open, if we went on our ways without the cloak of hypocrisy and lies that we wear now.

The important thing is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet.

The pages of European history are, so to speak, bespattered with the records of Black Mondays and Black Thursdays. It may be that, in this twentieth century, almost daily acquaintance with large-scale catastrophe has deprived the custom of its point. Black and white have tended to merge into a drab grey.

Il sistema bancario!" stava dicendo Mathis. "Che cos'è, se non usura? I banchieri sono strozzini; usurai. Ma siccome prestano soldi altrui, o soldi che non esistono, hanno un buon nome. Sono comunque usurai. Una volta, l'usura era un peccato mortale e una vergogna, e l'usuraio era un criminale che andava in prigione. Oggi, gli usurai sono gli dèi della terra, e l'unico peccato mortale è la povertà".

The Colonel's face cleared, 'My dear fellow, of course he should. One cannot write about that which one has never seen.

bankers love to lend money they haven't got to their creditors so that the creditors can pay back what they don't really owe

Life in the Impasse des Huit Anges would, Latimer thought, be rather like a rehearsal for Eternity.

The truth about many of our great traditional patriots is ugly or ludicrous; but it makes no difference. They are defended angrily. National feeling in small states is always angry; it must be so, for its roots are in fear and self-doubt and for those things reason is no protection.

Perhaps it is that I am old, but I find it extremely difficult to identify men with their ideas. I can dislike, even hate an idea, but the man who has it seems to be still a man.