Quotes from Erle Stanley Gardner

I told you just what she was—all velvet and claws!

will-have a tendency to

There was that about her which indicated she was warily watchful.

The whole structure of the law has to be a dignified, imposing edifice and built on firm foundations, if it is going to stand. Whenever you violate the law, you are tearing down a part of that structure, regardless of what goal you may want to achieve.

The best fighters don't worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking.

I like loose clothes, loose company, and loose talk, and to hell with the people who don't.

Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial

A nurse," I said, "would be wearing a starched uniform, and she'd have a fever thermometer ready to jab into a patient's mouth at the first sign of acute convalescence.

I take it," the lawyer remarked musingly, "patience isn't one of your virtues." "I didn't know," she said, "that patience WAS a virtue.

Events are like telephone poles, streaming back past the observation platform of a speeding train.

pool our information," Dimmick said, "to work out a joint plan of campaign." "Thank you, I don't think I'd care to do that," Mason told him. "I want to be free to represent my client in whatever way seems best as the situation develops." "Can't you see, Mr. Dimmick," Rodney Cuff said impatiently, "he's going to pin the whole thing on Driscoll if he has a

The reason men don't know the law of life is because they're afraid to look Eternity in the face.