The Mysterious Mr. Quin Quotes

You say your life is your own. But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play–it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.

To get at the cause for a thing, we must study the effect.

Time does not dispose of a question – it only presents it anew in a different guise.

Thought is yours only. Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it.

The longer the time that has elapsed, the more things fall into proportion. One sees them in their true relationship to one another.

Sometimes one sees things more clearly years afterwards than one could possibly at the time.

So many things look beautiful, before we’ve reached them. Some of the ugliest things in the world look the most beautiful…

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

Love can make devils of men as well as angels.

Is death the greatest evil that can happen to anyone?

In moments of great stress, the mind focuses itself upon some quite unimportant matter which is remembered long afterwards with the utmost fidelity, driven in, as it were, by the mental stress of the moment. It may be some quite irrelevant detail, like the pattern of a wallpaper, but it will never be forgotten.

Happy the wooing that’s not long doing.