Before Midnight Quotes

“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, Before Midnight

“Dignities are like faces; no two are the same.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“When I told [Lily Rowan] I wouldn't be able to make it to the Polo Grounds tomorrow, she began to call Wolfe names, and thought of several new ones that showed her wide experience and fine feeling for words.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it. It may be that a bevy of beautiful maidens in pure silk yellow very sheer gowns, barefooted, singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and scattering rose petals over me would do the trick, but I’d have to try it.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“introduced into the English Parliament in 1770. It ran, he said: “All women of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, whether virgins, maids, or widows, that shall, from and after this Act, impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony, any of His Majesty’s subjects, by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high heeled shoes, bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors and the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“Well." Wolfe was judicious. "You were not under oath. The police have been lied to informally many times by many people, including me. The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly valued and frequently exercised.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“That is not to impugn the dignity of any other man who may undertake it. Dignities are like faces; no two are the same. I”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“But if and when I find myself up a tree with a circle of man-eating tigers crouching on the ground below, and a squad of beavers starting to gnaw at the trunk of the tree, the sight of Saul approaching would be absolutely beautiful. I have never seen him fazed.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight

“And naturally, for you, as a consequence of the peculiar constitution of the human ego, your point of view is paramount. But your ego is bound to be jostled by other egos, and efforts to counteract the jostling by ignoring it have rarely succeeded. It is frequently advisable, and sometimes necessary, to give a little ground.”
― Rex Stout, Before Midnight