Leslie Charteris > Quotes

“I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Last Hero

“Do you think I'd carry a gun in a suit like this ? My tailor would throw a fit.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Plays with Fire

“Let’s see what you’ve got—as the actress said to the bishop,”
― Leslie Charteris, Enter the Saint

“I hope I never live to see the day when the miserable quibbling hair-splitters have won the earth, and there’s no more black and white, but everything’s just a dreary relative grey, and every one has a right to his own damned heresies, and it’s more noble to be broad-minded about your disgusting neighbours than to push their faces in as a preliminary to yanking them back into the straight and narrow way .”
― Leslie Charteris, The Avenging Saint

“Regretfully, I have decided that if the Saint Saga must remain permanently in print in its entirety, then it can only do so in its original form.”
― Leslie Charteris, Enter the Saint

“I'm called the Saint," he murmured. "But don't let us get melodramatic about it, son. The last man who got melodramatic with me was hanged at Exeter six months back. It don't seem to be healthy!”
― Leslie Charteris, Enter the Saint

“the Saint did not seem to be aware that he was multiplying miracles with an easy grace that would have made a Grand Lama look like a third-rate three-card man.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint versus Scotland Yard

“Simon Templar was a man who couldn’t help spreading melodrama all around him like an infectious disease.”
― Leslie Charteris, Enter the Saint

“Simon Templar, with the old careless swashbuckling days behind him, more stern and sober, playing bigger games than he had ever touched before – yet with the light of all the old ideals in blue eyes that would never grow old, and all the old laughing hell-for-leather recklessness waiting for his need.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Avenging Saint

“While the Saint, when it was necessary to play the part, could assume an aspect of proud or unprincipled poverty that would evoke a responsive twang from any normal heartstring, his usual appearance, fortunately or unfortunately, suggested a person who was so far on the other side of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he must have been seriously shocked when he first learned that gold spoons were not standard issue.”
― Leslie Charteris, Trust the Saint

“And it is also the story of Norman Kent, who was his friend, and how at one moment in that adventure he held the fate of two nations, if not of all Europe, in his hands; how he accounted for that stewardship; and how, one quiet summer evening, in a house by the Thames, with no melodrama and no heroics, he fought and died for an idea.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Closes the Case

“We’ve had enough of war. Fighting is for the strong – for those who know what they’re fighting for, and love the fight for its own sake. We were like that, my friends and I – and yet we swore that it should not happen again. Not this new fighting – not this cold-blooded scientific maiming and slaughter of schoolboys and poor grown-up fools herded to squalid death to make money for a bunch of slimy financiers. We saw it coming again. The flags flying, and the bands playing, and the politicians yaddering about a land fit for heroes to live in, and the poor fools cheering and being cheered, and another madness, worse than the last. Just another war to end war”
― Leslie Charteris, The Avenging Saint

“Paleneo”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint to the Rescue

“It was as if a rocket had exploded inside him, flooding all the dark places in his mind with light when he had caught up in that dynamic moment with the lead his instinct for adventure had given him.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Ace of Knaves

“Mallaby Road, Harrow, as the Saint discovered, was one of those jolly roads in which ladies and gentlemen live. Lords and ladies may be found in such places as Mayfair, Monte Carlo, and St Moritz; men and women may be found almost anywhere; but Ladies and Gentlemen blossom in their full beauty only in such places as Mallaby Road,”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint versus Scotland Yard

“Furillac”
― Leslie Charteris, Enter the Saint

“Moldys gallantly concealed his disappointment, although it seemed as if the luck which he thought had changed was turning dangerously coy again. “A woman like you doesn’t need jewels as much as they need her,” he said, omitting to credit the writer from whom he had swiped the line. Later”
― Leslie Charteris, Trust the Saint

“He sat without moving while coffee and balloon glasses were set before them.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Plays with Fire

“Every fibre of his being seemed to have been dissected into an individual sentience of its own: he was conscious of the vitality of every cell and corpuscle of his body, as though each separate atom of him was pressed into the service of that supercharged aliveness.”
― Leslie Charteris, Saint Overboard

“Christmas Day in the Workhouse,”
― Leslie Charteris, Saint Overboard

“With his rakehell profile and impudent blue eyes, this was a statement of highly questionable validity, but she refrained from taking issue with it.”
― Leslie Charteris, Trust the Saint

“Pardon me. In the excitement of the moment, and all that sort of thing, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm afraid I've had you at a disadvantage. My name is Templar-Simon Templar"-he caught the flash of stark hypnotic fear that blanched the big man's lips, and grinned even more gently. "You may have heard of me. I am the Saint.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint in New York

“We believe that for this diabolical discovery to take its place in the armament of the nations of Europe, at a time when jealousies and fears and the rumours of wars are again lifting their heads, would be a refinement of ‘civilisation’ which the world could well be spared. You may say that the exclusive possession of this invention would confirm Great Britain in an unassailable supremacy, and perhaps thereby secure the peace of Europe. We answer that no secret can be kept for ever. The sword is two-edged. And, as Vargan answered me by saying, ‘Science is international’ – so I answer you by saying that humanity is also international. We are content to be judged by the verdict of history, when all the facts are made known. But in accomplishing what we have accomplished, we have put you in the way of learning our identities; and that, as you will see, must be an almost fatal blow to such an organisation as mine. Nevertheless, I believe that in time I shall find a way for us to continue the work that we have set ourselves to do. We regret nothing that we have already done. Our only regret is that we should be scattered before we have had time to do more. Yet we believe that we have done much good, and that this last crime of ours is the best of all. Au revoir! Simon Templar (‘The Saint’).”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Closes the Case

“He was now looking at one of the best of them. The name of Ettore Bugatti has the same magic to the motoring enthusiast as do those of Annie Besant or Karl Marx to other circles of believers. Bugatti was”
― Leslie Charteris, Vendetta for the Saint

“disgraced an energetic chamois.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Returns

“oh, Pat, dear lass, I love you too much to be unselfish! I love your eyes and your lips and your voice and the way your hair shines like gold in the sun. I love your wisdom and your understanding and your kindliness and your courage and your laughter. I love you with every thought of my mind and every minute of my life. I love you so much that it hurts. I couldn’t face losing you. Without you, I just shouldn’t have anything to live for . . . And I don’t know where we shall go or what we shall do or what we shall find in the days that are coming. But I do know that if I never find more than I’ve got already – just you, lass! – I shall have had more than my life . . .’ ‘I shall have had more than mine, Simon . . . God bless you!”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Closes the Case

“for which a previous generation’s graphic term “lounge lizard” has never been bettered, was not constructed”
― Leslie Charteris, Thanks to the Saint

“the wrath of saints can be a far more dreadful thing than the wrath of sinners.”
― Leslie Charteris, The Saint Closes the Case

“That’s a point of view,” he admitted.”
― Leslie Charteris, Meet the Tiger

“bank-robber’s take-off, using the violent acceleration to swing the doors shut. He went on to justify his boast of its speed by thundering”
― Leslie Charteris, Vendetta for the Saint