Buyer's remorse

     "Then he must want to discuss the trust."

    "I doubt it. He'll probably talk golf all the time."

    "You mustn't let him. This is your big chance. You just get that money out of him. You ought to have done it long ago."

    She spoke with the imperious curtness of a princess of the Middle Ages giving instructions to one of the scullions or scurvy knaves on her payroll, and Jerry found himself regarding her with disfavor. Even before his soul mate had come into his life he had begun to entertain doubts as to whether in contracting to link his lot with that of Vera Upshaw he might not have been a little precipitate. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but after a while something uncomfortably like regret had begun to creep in. Had it, he asked himself, been altogether wise to sign on the dotted line with one in whom the bossiness which too often goes with extreme beauty was so marked?

(from The Girl in Blue, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Oops, I forgot about her

He now saw her in the office of a registrar licensed to perform marriages, for he was sure that a girl like that would not want one of those ghastly choral weddings with bishops and assistant clergy horsing around all over the place. They would get it all fixed up in a couple of minutes, and later on they would sit together in their cozy little nest like two lovebirds on a perch. In the long winter evenings that would be, of course. In the summer they would be playing golf or enjoying a refreshing swim.

It was as his mind's eye was probing even more deeply into their domestic life that there came to him the realization that there was an obstacle, and a rather serious one, in the way of the bliss he was contemplating. He suddenly remembered what for the moment had slipped his mind, that he waws engaged to be married to someone else.

(from The Girl in Blue, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

They have ways of making it uncomfortable

 "Oh, hullo. You were on the jury, weren't you?" she said, and it surprised and pleased Jerry that she should have remembered him. Yes, he said, he had been on the jury, adding that he had had no alternative.

"The summons told me not to hereof fail, and I wasn't taking any chances. I wonder what they do to you if you hereof fail."

"I believe they get awfully annoyed."

"Something lingering with boiling oil in it?"

"I shouldn't wonder."

(from The Girl in Blue, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse) 

It would make anyone nervous

 The afternoon sun poured brightly into the office of the manager of Guildenstern's Stores, Madison Avenue, New York, but there was no corresponding sunshine in the heart of Homer Pyle, the eminent corporation lawyer, as he sat there. He had in the opinion of his companion in the room something of the uneasy air of cat on hot bricks. It was not difficult to probe the reason for his loss of aplomb. A good corporation lawyer can generally take it as well as dish it out, but it is trying him too high when you telephone him in the middle of the day's work to inform him that his sister has just been arrested for shoplifting. In similar circumstances a justice of the Supreme Court would wriggle and perspire.

(from The Girl in Blue, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Hard to search in a crowd

 He fetched up on the island in the middle of the road with feelings of relief. The island was crowded. Under the powerful light it was possible to see one's next door neighbor. Charles annoyed all the rest of the people on the island by being neighbour to each of them in turn. He trod on several toes, was prodded in the ribs by a very powerful umbrella, and a number of people asked him what he thought he was doing. As it was impossible to explain that he was looking for Margaret, he had to say he was sorry a good many times.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

No one seems to like him

 Mr. Hale returned to his office, where he presently interviewed Mr. Egbert Standing. He had not met him before, and he looked at him now with some disfavour. Mr. Hale did not like fat young men; he did not like young men who lolled. He disapproved of bow ties with loose ends, and of scented cigarettes. He regarded the curl in Egbert's hair with well-founded suspicion. For a short moment he shared a sentiment with Miss Margot Standing - he did not like Egbert. The young clerk who took notes in the corner did not like him either.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Not how these things are done

 He looked up to find a box of chocolates under his nose. "Do have one. The long ones are hard, but the round ones are a dream."

"No thank you," said Mr. Hale.

Margot took one of the round ones herself. She had eaten so many chocolates already that it was necessary to crunch it quickly in order to get the flavour. She crunched it, and Mr. Hale waiting disapprovingly until she had finished. He wished to offer her his condolences upon her father's death, and it appeared to him in the highest degree unseemly that he should do so whilst she was eating chocolates.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Where Margaret had stood

     Charles continued to look into the room. The place where Margaret had stood was just at the edge of where the thick double wreath of fat blue flowers began to twine itself about a central medallion. There was a little worn place just to the right of where she had stood. He stared at the worn place. Margaret had been here and was gone again - Margaret. Well, that put the lid on telephoning to the police. Yes, by gum it did!

    A quick spasm of laughter shook him. He had said that it would be interesting to meet Margaret again - interesting.

    "Oh, my hat!" said Charles to himself.

    Interesting enough - yes, and a bit to spare if he and Margaret were to meet in a crowded police court. A very pretty romantic scene "Do you recognize this woman?" "Oh, yes, I almost married her once." Headlines from the evening paper rose luridly: "Parted Lovers meet in Police Court." "Jilted Explorer and Lost Bride." "Should Women become Criminals?" No, the police were off.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Alone with his house

 Charles ate his dinner alone. During the soup he regretted Archie Millar, but with the fish the regret passed. He did not want Archie or Archie's company; he did not want to go to a theatre or do a show; he wanted vehemently and insistently to go to the house which was now his own house, and to go to it whilst it stood empty of everything except his memories.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

They need to examine themselves

 "That's what I thought, and that's what I wrote!" Dean said firmly. He crawled to his feet and clutched the desk for support. "What good is a newspaper unless it tells the truth and fights for the rights of the people?"

Mahone shrugged. "A lot of them should ask that question of themselves," he said dryly.

(from "Rustler Roundup," by Louis L'Amour)

The smile of a woman

 She looked grave and straight and honestly at me, and it seemed no other girl had ever looked so far into my heart. At twenty-four the smile of a woman is a glory to the blood and a spark to the spirit, and carries a richer wine than any sold over a bar in any frontier saloon.

(from "End of the Drive," by Louis L'Amour)

Money's attitude

 It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous. Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.

(from "The Courting of Griselda," by Louis L'Amour)

Weigh the risk and reward

 Sweat was all over Bob Heseltine's face, and it was a cool evening. He wanted to go for his gun the worst way, but he had another want that beat that one all hollow. H wanted to live.

(from "Caprock Rancher," by Louis L'Amour)

What money looks like

Seemed like a long time I sat there, looking at the firelight on that money. I'd never seen that much money before but it didn't look like money to me; it looked like Pa sweating over his fields back in Missouri, and like all the word we'd done, by day and night, rounding up those cattle and putting brands on them. It looked like all those folks around us who shared the drive with us . . . that money was there for them.

(from "Caprock Rancher," by Louis L'Amour)

Think!

 One great fear that I have in this computer age is that people will begin to lose the ability to think for themselves. Even the absence of a necessity of memorizing things will affect that.

Quixotic

 "Mannix will bear looking into."

Markham put down his knife and fork and leaned back. I'm overcome! Such Himalayan sagacity! With that evidence against him, he should be arrested at once. Vance, my dear old friend, are you feeling quite normal? No dizzy spells lately? No shooting pains in the head? Knee jerks all right?"

"Furthermore, Dr. Lindquist was wildly infatuated with the Canary, and insanely jealous. Recently threatened to take a pistol and hold a little pogrom of his own."

"That's better." Markham sat up. Where did you get this information?"

"Ah! That's my secret."

Markham was annoyed. "Why so mysterious?"

"Needs must, old chap. Gave my word and all that sort of thing. And I'm a bit quixotic, don't y' know - too much Cervantes in my youth." He spoke lightly, but Markham knew him too well to push the question.

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Typical feminine wiles

Nature had endowed Miss La Fosse with many of its arts, and those that Nature had omitted, Miss La Fosse herself had supplied.

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Unsolved problem

 "Heath is committed, body and soul, to a belief in Skeel's guilt; and Markham is as effectively strangled with legal red tape as the poor Canary was strangled with powerful hands. Eheu, Van! There's nothing left for me but to set forth tomorrow a cappella, like Gaborian's Monsieur Lecoq, and see what can be done in the noble cause of justice. I shall ignore both Heath and Markham, and become as a pelican of the wilderness, an owl of the desert, a sparrow alone upon the housetop. Really, y' know, I am no avenger of society, but I do detest an unsolved problem."

(from The "Canary" Murder Mystery, by S. S. Van Dine)

He would do anything

 "But what does he do? Whence cometh his lucre?"

"His father manufactured automobile accessories, made a fortune at it, and left the business to him. He tinkers at it, but not seriously, though I believe he has designed a few appurtenances."

"I do hope the hideous cut-glass olla for holding paper bouquets is not one of them. The man who invented that tonneau decoration is capable of any fiendish crime."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Lesser of two evils

 "Any man capable of so ingenious and clever a piece of deception is obviously a person of education and imagination; and he most certainly would not have run the stupendous risk of killing a woman unless he had feared some overwhelming disaster - unless, indeed, her continuing to live would have caused him greater mental anguish, and would have put him in greater jeopardy, even than the crime itself. Between two colossal dangers, he chose the murder as the lesser."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

The perfect crime

 "But regard this particular crime: look at it closely. What do you find? You will perceive that its mise en scene has been staged, and its drama enacted, down to every minute detail - like a Zola novel. It is almost mathematically perfect. And therein, d' ye see, lies the irresistible inference of its having been carefully premeditated and planned. To use an art term, it is a tickled-up crime. Therefore, its conception was not spontaneous. And yet, don't y' know, I can't point out any specific flaw; for its great flaw lies in its being flawless. And nothing flawless, my dear fellow, is natural or genuine."  (from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

I will provide a little help on this quote for the uninitiated (of which I am one). 

"Mise en scene" means the arrangement of furniture and stage properties in a play. 

Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the best-known practitioner of the literary school of theatrical naturalism, According to Wikipedia "the presentation of a naturalistic play, in terms of the setting and performances, should be realistic and not flamboyant or theatrical. The single setting of Miss Julie, for example, is a kitchen. Second, the conflicts in the play should be issues of meaningful, life-altering significance — not small or petty. And third, the play should be simple — not cluttered with complicated sub-plots or lengthy expositions."

The definition that I found for "tickled-up" is "something that is so hilarious that you feel like you are going to fall over from laughing so hard." However, that doesn't quite seem to fit here.

They don't go according to form

 "Now, Markham, just what are the universally recognized features of a sordid crime of robbery and murder? Brutality, disorder, haste, ransacked drawers, cluttered desks, broken jewel cases, rings stripped from the victim's fingers, severed pendant chains, torn clothing, tripped-over chairs, upset lamps, broken vases, twisted draperies, strewn floors, and so forth. Such are the accepted immemorial indications - eh, what? But, consider a moment, old chap. Outside of fiction and the drama, in how many crimes do they all appear - all in perfect ordination, and without a single element to contradict the general effect? That is to say, how many actual crimes are technically perfect in their setting? None! And why? Simply because nothing actual in this life - nothing that is spontaneous and genuine - runs to accept form in every detail. The law of chance and fallibility invariably steps in."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)