E.R. Punshon > Quotes

“It seemed to him Mark was one of those who, if only they are called leaders, are prepared to follow dutifully in the path pointed out to them,”
― E.R. Punshon, Information Received

“if anyone had told him that what really roused his enthusiasm for flogging was a primeval love of cruelty lurking in his sub-consciousness he would have been most indignant.”
― E.R. Punshon, Information Received

“Of course, his athletic record was good enough to have secured him a post on the staff of almost any school in the land, except the few where the standard is so high that besides the necessary athletics, some scholarship also is demanded.”
― E.R. Punshon, Information Received

“IN EVERY CASE of serious crime, a tremendous amount of work is done of which no one ever hears save those engaged in the investigation. Innumerable statements are taken, countless witnesses are questioned, clue after clue followed up, all with no other result than that the statements are seen to be worthless, the witnesses are found to have nothing to say, the clues to be without significance. Yet in their totality all this apparent waste of time and energy does serve the negative purpose of closing the blind alleys and so allowing attention to be concentrated on the possibly correct path.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“If I were half as clever as people say,” retorted Bobby tartly, “I expect I should be at least twice as clever as I am.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“We have to employ women nowadays, everyone does, but I often wish it wasn’t necessary. Complications.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“not like doctor’s stuff you can go on taking for ever and never notice the difference except when the bill comes in.”
― E.R. Punshon, Diabolic Candelabra

“People in love get into highly emotional states in which almost anything can happen.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“said Ursula and began to cry. Bobby sighed and waited. He knew that when a woman begins to cry there is nothing else to do.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“And though eggs have many and striking, occasionally very striking, merits, charm is not among them.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“One can believe anything of a boy in love,”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“But it was going to be a difficult task to suggest the simplification he felt necessary without causing a good deal of that heart burning which makes difficult the smooth and efficient running of any organization,”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“Marshal of France was earning for himself that title—‘enfant chéri de la défaite’—by which history will know him,”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“No one can be left alone in a case of murder”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“behind that every day façade, human passions of love and hate, of greed and of ambition, were working themselves out dangerously to their appointed end.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“A puzzling woman,” he told himself, unconscious of the tautology,”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“the public prosecutor’s office had nothing to say. Not their affair. Their business was not to find facts but to receive them from others, chew them, digest them, serve them up in a dainty dish fit to set before a jury and a judge.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“Anything possible with a man,” she declared. “You’re never sure. Trust a man, trust thin ice when there’s a thaw.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“Everyone concerned seems to be a sort of different mental study.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“Or perhaps it’s something else, something inside him, his own self.” She paused and looked puzzled as if she had said something she herself did not fully understand. “I believe it’s that,” she said. Bobby did not ask what she meant, for he felt that here were strange depths of psychology that neither he nor she, nor perhaps any human being, fully understood.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“him. No doubt Inspector Owen would agree that the one safe thing for a murderer to do was to wash his hands and go home to tea; and yet, oddly enough, that was the one thing they never did seem capable of doing.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“a small boy chanced to be in the vicinity, observed the incident, and, being as curious as small boys are and should be in so strange a world,”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“the gardening was being done at the moment from the depths of a comfortable deck chair, but spiritually Bobby was hard at it, digging with fervour, hoeing, sowing, mowing, pruning, weeding, one and all with extreme and extraordinary energy.”
― E.R. Punshon, Diabolic Candelabra

“Hard to tell what a man really feels for you,” Mrs Jordan pronounced. “You can’t ever be sure of ’em. Anne thinks she knows. So you do till you find out different. Feel like that all right, men do, when there’s kisses to be got, but once their backs are turned—well, you’re only a fool to trust ’em.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“Didn’t someone once say that we all live both in eternity and in time?”
― E.R. Punshon, Six Were Present

“Preposterous.” “Murder is always preposterous,”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“that only the most utter, hopeless fool of a policeman would ever risk seeking trouble when trouble was always so persistently finding him.”
― E.R. Punshon, Diabolic Candelabra

“murder has been done, and in murder no one can be left alone, no one’s name can be left out.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden

“how many more such offices, legal, commercial, dull to all appearance with the utter dullness of everyday routine, hid beneath their drab, commonplace exteriors such human dramas of terror and of passion.”
― E.R. Punshon, The Dark Garden