Quotes from Patricia Wentworth

Men could be drunk with pride, with passion, or with power. They could be drunken with hatred, or with the lust of gain.

As Lord Tennyson so truly says: Put down the passions that make earth Hell! Down with ambition, avarice, pride, Jealousy, down! Cut off from the mind The bitter springs of anger and fear; Down too, down at your own fireside, With the evil tongue and the evil ear, For both are at war with mankind!

they were on the sort of terms which admit of intimacy, affection, and a familiarity which may breed anything between contempt and love. In fact a very wide frame into which almost any picture could be fitted.

It came home to him then that he was separated from the people round him -- not as yet by bolts and bars, by prison walls, or by the sentence of the law, but by the intangible barriers which have separated the murderer from his kind ever since the mark was set on Cain.

the best thing that can happen to anyone who is doing wrong is to be found out. If he is not found out he will do more wrong and earn a heavier punishment.

There were times when the blessings of education appeared a little over-rated, since it seemed only to enable the nations to quarrel with greater fluency in some modern Tower of Babel.

And if you, Miss Hilary, could blow up that fire and put on a kettle, we will make her a nice cup of tea. In fact I think we all should all be the better of a nice cup of tea.

How comfortable to be dead and buried, with your virtues proclaimed upon the headstone of a nicely tended grave and all your faults forgotten.

So much hair and so badly controlled.

was paler. Her hand closed on the letter it

Very few people want to know the truth. They wish to be confirmed in their own opinions, which is a very different thing—very different indeed.

Lois, as fresh as paint in a slim black suit which showed off her figure and flattered her skin, the white camellia of a blameless life at the newest, smartest angle, and the latest bit of nonsense adorning the auburn waves of her hair.

Old, beautiful words – 'From envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness – Good Lord deliver us.' How many of the people who make a glib response have really turned away from the evil in their thoughts before it breaks into word or open deed?

doubt if there was anything to choose in the fanatical temper of their minds between Savonarola and Torquemada.

THE NEXT FEW days were got through as days of that sort are got through. You have to live them, and know them, and feel them, and when they are over you have to get on with the business of living again.

Standing with reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet.

and the poet, Longfellow.

She had come to an inner strength that held her up. When things were so bad that they couldn't be any worse, something came to you—some courage, some control.

Men don't worry a lot – not nearly so much as the women. Real bad worriers women are, and wives are the worst of the lot. One of the things that put me off marrying was hearing the way they go on. If it isn't their husbands it's their children, and if it isn't their children it's their clothes, or their hens, or their cats, or their dogs, or what their neighbours think.

She was quite aware of Richard's desire to be alone with Jenny, and she had no intention of giving way to it, or of making things easy for him. Jenny wanted time, and Richard had no business to stampede her.

Miss Silver's fire. 'Of course

It is better for children to love their parents than to be afraid of them,' she said. 'You see, if they're afraid and they do something wrong, they don't come out with it. It just piles up in side them and goes on getting worse.

She wondered where things went to when you forgot them. Perhaps it meant that her memory was not gone but was merely sleeping. Perhaps it would come again suddenly and she would remember all those things which she had forgotten.