Ellery Queen > Quotes

“It was wrong. It was like arresting the gun for murder.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Had Walter ever read Bernard Shaw (he had not), he might have been pleased with the line, "When you have learned something, my dear, it often feels at first as if you had lost something.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“The girl was kind in a special way; when you spoke to her, she seemed to stop thinking of whatever she been thinking and listened to you altogether.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“LONG, LONG AGO IN the Incubation Period of Man—long before booking agents, five-a-days, theatrical boarding houses, subway circuits, and Variety—when Megatherium roamed the trees, when Broadway was going through its First Glacial Period, and when the first vaudeville show was planned by the first lop-eared, low-browed, hairy impresario, it was decreed: “The acrobat shall be first.” Why the acrobat should be first no one ever explained; but that this was a dubious honor every one on the bill—including the acrobat—realized only too well. For it was recognized even then, in the infancy of Show Business, that the first shall be last in the applause of the audience. And all through the ages, in courts and courtyards and feeble theatres, it was the acrobat—whether he was called buffoon, farceur, merry-andrew, tumbler, mountebank, Harlequin, or punchinello—who was thrown, first among his fellow-mimes, to the lions of entertainment to whet their appetites for the more luscious feasts to come. So that to this day their muscular miracles are performed hard on the overture’s last wall shaking blare, performed with a simple resignation that speaks well for the mildness and resilience of the whole acrobatic tribe.”
― Ellery Queen, The Adventures of Ellery Queen

“My very revered father, I am beginning to think that - Well, there’s little peace in this world for a quiet book-loving man.”
― Ellery Queen, The Roman Hat Mystery

“Money’s the root of all evil,” retorted the Inspector with a grin. Ellery’s tone did not change. “Not only the root, Dad—but the fruit, too.”
― Ellery Queen, The Roman Hat Mystery

“Why did people do it? Why this herd curiosity about a street, a house, windows, doors? He was a public servant, the Inspector mused, but there were times when he would enjoy loading all the rubbernecks onto barges and towing them out to sea to be served, with ceremony, to sharks.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“แทงหวยออนไลน์กับ Huaysboclubs รับโปรโมชั่นดีที่สุดถึง 30% จ่ายจริง เชื่อถือได้ อันดับ 1 อัตราจ่ายสูงที่สุดในไทย”
― Ellery Queen, The Adventures of Ellery Queen

“Now, Jehovah, Yahweh, was a member of no Trinity, was represented by no lambs, suffered no little children. He was an almighty vindictive deity. He meddled in individual lives. And He was always right because He was.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“For remember always the maxim: He who would know right must first know wrong!”
― Ellery Queen, The Roman Hat Mystery

“There’s no wonderment left in the real world any longer. Or rather, everything is so wonderful the wonder’s gone out of it.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“If it pains you to discover that a Nice Man can be a crumbum, Tom, it's life you've got to object to, not Percy in particular.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Long, long ago—when, it will be recalled, Megatherium roamed the trees—the same lop-eared impresario who said: “The acrobat shall be first,” also laid down the dictum that: “The show must go on,” and for as little reason. Accidents might happen, the juvenile might run off with the female lion-tamer, the ingénue might be howling drunk, the lady in the fifth row, right, might have chosen the theatre to be the scene of her monthly attack of epilepsy, fire might break out in Dressing Room A, but the show must go on. Not even a rare juicy homicide may annul the sacred dictum. The show must go on despite hell, high water, drunken managers named Kelly, and The Fantastic Affair of the Hanging Acrobat.”
― Ellery Queen, The Adventures of Ellery Queen

“The place smelled male, not the metal-and-soap maleness of a locker room nor the malt-and-sawdust maleness of an old-time corner saloon, but the leather-and-oiled-wood maleness of a city club, as finished and self-consistent as the ash of a fine cigar. At sight of the skirted figure stalking him, the sole visible attendant took refuge behind a showcase; surely a giraffe, were it a male one, would have startled him less.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,”
― Ellery Queen, The Greek Coffin Mystery

“Now, now,” said Ellery with a smile. “Surely that’s overheated imagination, Jenny? I thought ghosts are indigenous only to old English castles.”
― Ellery Queen, The Adventures of Ellery Queen

“Have patience and endure; this unhappiness will one day be beneficial.”
― Ellery Queen, The Greek Coffin Mystery

“What is proof?” asked Ellery. “It’s merely the clothing of what we already know to be true. Anybody can prove anything, given sufficient will to believe.”
― Ellery Queen, The Door Between

“He was startled, but there was that about him which made it impossible to show what he felt, an instant and utter reflex of stillness to counteract all outward evidence of surprise, fear, anything.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“their own stamps. Then how,” Macgowan’s face darkened, “did Donald come to have this Foochow local?” They were silent for a while as the taxi threaded its way among the pillars of Sixth Avenue. Then Ellery drawled: “By the way, how valuable is the Foochow?” “Valuable?” Macgowan repeated absently. “That depends. In all cases of rarities the price is a variable consideration, depending upon how much it has brought at its last sale. The famous British Guiana of 1856—the one-cent magenta listed by Scott’s as Number 13—which is in the possession of the Arthur Hind estate is worth $32,500.00, as I remember it—I may be wrong in my recollection, but it cost Hind that or somewhere around that. It’s catalogued at $50,000.00, which means nothing. It’s worth $32,500.00 because that’s approximately what Hind paid for it at the Ferrary auction in Paris. … This Foochow set me back a cool ten thousand.” “Ten thousand dollars!” Ellery whistled. “But you’d no idea what it had brought previously, since it’s not been generally known before. So how could you—” “That’s the figure Varjian set, and stuck to, and that’s the amount I made out my check for. It’s worth the money, although it’s a pretty stiff price. Since, as far as I know, it’s the only one of its kind in existence—and especially considering the peculiar nature of the error—I could probably turn it over for a profit today if I put it up at auction.” “Then you weren’t victimized, at any rate,” murmured Ellery. “Kirk didn’t try to soak you, if that’s any consolation. … Here we are.” As they were removing their coats in the foyer of the Kirk suite, they heard Donald Kirk’s voice from the salon.”
― Ellery Queen, The Chinese Orange Mystery

“But they forget that crime is the criminal’s business, and that every business leaves its indelible mark of habit on the business man.”
― Ellery Queen, The French Powder Mystery

“And naturally we wish to preserve a stately ignito, Panzer – dislike adulation of the crowd and that sort of thing.”
― Ellery Queen, The Roman Hat Mystery

“He does a work that must be done, and so he justifies his bread. Also, if he and the very few like him who are born to us teach us the love which is difficult, it cannot be said that they were born in vain.” The love which is difficult …”
― Ellery Queen, And on the Eighth Day

“When Hermione questioned Dr Willoughby anxiously, he said that ‘Nora’s getting along about as well as we can expect, Hermy.’ Hermy didn’t dare ask him any more questions. But she rarely left Nora’s side, and she would go white if she saw Nora try to lift so much as a long biography.”
― Ellery Queen, Calamity Town / Dragon's teeth

“taboret itself was small and”
― Ellery Queen, The Greek Coffin Mystery

“the quest for the Holy Grail itself is not more beset with difficulties than the merest seeking after one true, unvarnished word.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“MR. ELLERY QUEEN HAD once observed: “Crime, Ducamier or somebody has said, is a cancer on the social body. That’s true, but peculiarly. For despite the fact that cancer is an organism run wild, it nevertheless must possess pattern. Science concedes as much even while research men are trying to recognize it in their laboratories. That they’ve failed is neither here nor there; the pattern must exist. It’s the same story in detection: recognize the pattern and you’re within shooting distance of the ultimate truth.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“I always said higher education was perfectly useless against the ordinary emergencies of life.”
― Ellery Queen, The Siamese Twin Mystery

“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. …”
― Ellery Queen, The Greek Coffin Mystery

“The young man seated himself at a writing desk, selected a reed pen, fixed its point with a small knife, dipped it in a jar of ink, and wrote on a scrap of paper. There was something arcane, hieratic, about his manner. Scriptorium … Suddenly Ellery realized what it was: with his own eyes, in the century of rocket experimentation and quantum physics, he was actually beholding a scribe at work in the manner of the ancients. In silence he picked up the piece of paper. Sanquetum.”
― Ellery Queen, And on the Eighth Day