It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
To every problem, there is a most simple solution.
Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.””An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.
No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?–Poirot
If you place your head in a lion’s mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.
Where do one’s fears come from? Where do they shape themselves? Where do they hide before coming out into the open?
The truth must be quite plain, if one could just clear away the litter.
We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, ‘What’s the good of doing anything?’ Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age.
When you’re in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I’ve always thought so.
The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.
Un archeologo è il miglior marito che una donna possa avere: più lei diventa vecchia, più lui s’interessa a lei.
One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.
In fact there is only your own instinct?Not instinct, Hastings. Instinct is a bad word. It is my knowledge-my experience-that tells me that something about that letter is wrong-
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
No one human being knows the full truth about another human being. Not even one’s nearest and dearest.
You don’t appreciate a faithful husband when you’ve got one,’ said Tommy.’All my friends tell me you never know with husbands,’ said Tuppance.’You have the wrong kind of friends,’ said Tommy.
It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
One little Indian left all alone, he went out and hanged himself and then there were none.
There! Now we’re friends!” declared the minx. “Say you’re sorry about my sister -“”I am desolated!””That’s a good boy!
You would hate people if you were like me… If you weren’t wanted.
E: When one has at last reached freedom, can one even contemplate going back?HC: But if it is not possible to go back, or to choose to go back, then it is not freedom!~Ericsson; Hilary Craven
I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.
A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can’t help looking like a sheep.
How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politician’s life. He has to bow to the country’s feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.
There are questions that you don’t ask because you’re afraid of the answers to them.
Women were very queer. Unexpectedly cruel and unexpectedly kind.
It was due to his tact, to his judgment, to his sympathetic manipulation of human beings that the atmosphere had always been such a happy one… If there was a change, therefore, the change must be due to the man at the top.
In my opinion, the state of mind of a community is always directly due to the influence of the man at the top.
I’ve got a very nice staff here. People with patience, you know, and good temper, and not too brainy, because if you have people who are brainy, they are bound to be very impatient.
The evidence of history is against you. The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation. It is a question of getting the true perspective, of seeing things in proportion.
But it is not always the people who say most who do most.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
The amount of women you hear say, “If Donald—or Arthur—or whatever his name was—had only lived.” And I sometimes think but if he had, he’d have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
My flute, M. Poirot, is my oldest companion. When everything else fails, music remains.
Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it’s mercenary of me, but there it is
If you care for money too much, it is only the money you see, everything else is in shadow.
Everything is possible, isn’t it? The world soon teaches one that!
Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?… Because it is sometimes necessary.
The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.
More children suffer from interference than from noninterference.
At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction – it fascinated rather than repelled.
What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed.
Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That’s all prehistoric.
But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.
I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.
To marry and have children, that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred–more, in a thousand, can make for herself a name and position as you have done.
After all, perhaps dirt isn’t really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe.
I gather,” he added, “that you’ve never had much time to study the classics?””That is so.””Pity. Pity. You’ve missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way.”Poirot shrugged his shou
Speech is the deadliest of revealers.’ – Hercule Poirot, Cards on the Table
What can I say at seventy-five? “Thank God for my good life,and for all the love that has been given to me.
I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous.
… one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back – that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street.
Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
The longer the time that has elapsed, the more things fall into proportion. One sees them in their true relationship to one another.
Besides a burial service is rather lovely. Makes you feel uplifted, the grief is real. It makes you feel awful but it does something to you. I mean, it works it out like perspiration.
Somehow, the more I get older, and the more I see of people and sadness and illness and everything, the sorrier I get for everyone.
Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.
But when a man is really in love he can’t help looking like a sheep. Now whenever that young man looked he looked like a sheep I take back all is this morning. It is genuine.
Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.”-Caroline to Ursual.
When a man’s neck’s in danger, he doesn’t stop to think too much about sentiment.
One can’t do anything without a man. Men know so much, and are able to get information in so many ways that are simply impossible to women.
Business is based on the well-known principle of supply and demand. You want something, the other man has it. The only thing left to settle is the price.
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.
All three wore the air of superiority assumed by people who are already in a place when studying new arrivals.
What an absurdity to go and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having revolutions.
One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends—but there’s no one who knew me as a young girl—non one who belongs to the old days. I’ve been alone for quite a long time now.
We do all these things when we are young. The poise, the savoir faire, it comes later.
Everybody said, “Follow your heart”. I did, it got broken
The things she said seemed to have very little relation to the last thing she had said a minute before. She was the sort of person, Tommy thought, who might know a great deal more than she chose to reveal.
HC: You think I shall differently tomorrow? [about suicide]J: People do.HC: Yes, perhaps. If you’re doing things in a mood of hot despair. But when it’s cold despair, it’s different. I’ve nothing to live for, you see.~Hilary Craven; Jessop
She didn’t want to die. She couldn’t imagine wanting to die…Death was for—for other people.
I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.
Oh, I’m not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it’s very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they’ve taken away everything you had in the world?
There hung about her the restrained energy of a whiplash.
In an English village, you turn over a stone and have no idea what will crawl out.Miss Marple
Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.
You do think you know about everything,” said her husband. I do,” said Tuppence.
And how do you know that these fine begonias are not of equal importance?
Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No reasonable offer refused.
From now on, it is our task to suspect each and everyone amongst us. Forewarned is forearmed. Take no risks and be alert to danger. That is all.
When the sun shines you cannot see the moon,” he said. “But when the sun is gone ah,when the sun is gone.
If one could order a crime as one does a dinner, what would you choose? . . . Let’s review the menu. Robbery? Frogery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder—red-blooded murder—with trimmings, of course.
When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.
Marriage is called all sorts of things, a haven, and a refuge, and a crowning glory, and a state of bondage, and lots more. But do you know what I think it is?”What?”A sport!”And a damned good sport too,’ said Tommy.
I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.
Ah, but you must have a Christmas uncomplicated by murder.
You have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,’ said Poirot. ‘You can relieve your feelings by expedient of the printed word. You have the power of the pen over your enemies.
I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced
One mustn’t refuse the unusual, if it is offered to one.
She’s had a long life of experience in noticing evil, fancying evil, suspecting evil and going forth to do battle with evil.
Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.
I mean that if you are not absolutely sure of a thing, it is so difficult to commit yourself to a definite course of action.
I like to see an angry Englishman,” said Poirot. “They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.
I think Mrs. Leidner seems happier already from just talking about it. That’s always a help, you know. It’s bottling things up that makes them get on your nerves.
When a man’s neck’s in danger, he doesn’t stop to think too much aboutsentiment.
Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man’s to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide.
Sometimes what you think is an end is only a beginning. And that wouldn’t do at all.
What I think is a different matter. Maybe I think some rather curious things—but until thinking’s got you somewhere it’s no use talking about it.
That’s where all the trouble in life comes from. Thinking.
A meal should always lie lightly on the estomac,” said Poirot. “It should not be so heavy as to paralyze thought.
The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.
I think I said that every generation had its weaklings–that that was one of the penalties of greatness–but that their failings were seldom remembered by posterity.
When you find that people are not telling you the truth—look out!
To know when to use the truth is the essence of successful deception
When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.
Mr Rycroft said nothing. It was so difficult not to say the wrong thing to Captain Wyatt that it was usually safer not to reply at all.
It seems odd that as far as I know nobody has yet been murdered for having too perfect a character! And yet perfection is undoubtedly an irritating thing!
Those words of hers had meant nothing – you could not dismiss [however] a human being so easily.
Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea has infinitely more variety.
Discussions of death and such matters do more to unlock the human tongue than any other subject.
Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn’t! It’s only human nature.
Human nature is always interesting… And it’s curious to see how certain types always tend to act in exactly the same way.” – Miss Marple, The Herb of Death, Pg. 167
I was thinking, that when my time comes, I should be sorry if the only plea I had to offer was that of justice. Because it might mean that only justice would be meted out to me.
Too much mercy… often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.
You are, madame, so perfectly armoured, so completely sure of yourself.”Now I wonder, if I am to take that as a compliment?”It is, perhaps, a warning–not to treat life with arrogance.
I suppose, like most young people nowadays, boredom is what you dread most in the world, and yet, I can assure you, there are worse things.
You are young still. Naturally, one tries this, that and the other, but what one eventually settles down into is the life one prefers.
There is something about the defencelessness of youth that moves me to tears. Youth is so vulnerable. It is so ruthless–so sure. So generous and so demanding.
It is the courage, the insistence, the ruthless force of youth.
Maybe it is because I am an old man, but I find, M. Poirot, that there is something about the defenselessness of youth that moves me to tears. Youth is so vulnerable. It is so ruthless – so sure. So generous and so demanding.
Juliet singles out Romeo. Desdemona claims Othello. They have no doubts, the young, no fear, no pride.
Who was there to guard youth from pain and death – youth who could not, who had never been able to, guard itself? Did they know too little? Or was it that they knew too much, and therefore thought they knew it all?
It has been my experience, that women possess little or no pride where love affairs are concerned. Pride is a quality often on their lips, but not apparent in their actions.
…But even then you have to reckon with a criminal’s chief vice.”What is that?” Conceit. A criminal never believes that his crime can fail.
Thought is yours only. Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it.
Miss Howard: Like a good detective story myself. Lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last Chapter. Everyone dumbfounded. Real crime – you’d know at once.
The great thing in these cases is to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple.
I think people more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possible because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.
If Hori were to die, I should not forget! Hori is a song in my heart for ever… That means-that there is no more death…
It is romantic, yes,’ agreed Hercule Poirot. ‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun’.
A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life.
I know there’s a proverb which that says ‘To err is human,’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
The eye is diverted from the real business, it is caught by the spectacular action that means nothing–nothing at all.
The law. Lady Frances, is an uncertain animal. It has twists and turns that surprise the non-legal mind.
Living alone, with no one to consult or talk to, one might easily become melodramatic, and imagine things which had no foundation on fact.
Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop…suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.
What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one’s house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.
That was what murder was-as easy as that!But afterwards you went on remembering…
[Murder] doesn’t concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don’t know how that shadow is going to affect our lives.
People more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.
I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim-it is the picture of a girl watching her lover dies.
Don’t go,” said Cedric. “Murder has made you practically one of the family.
Poirot said “you will find,M.le docteur,if you have much to do with cases of this kind,that they all resemble each other in one thing.””what is that?” I asked curiously”everyone concerned in them has something to hide
In fact,’ said Poirot, ‘she stabbed him in the dark, not realising that he was dead already, but somehow deduced that he had a watch in his pyjama pocket, took it out, put back the hands blindly and gave it the requisite dent.
People bicker so and have such rows. Even if they’re fond of each other, they still seem to have rows and not to mind a bit whether they have them in public or not.
It’s extraordinary, the amount of misunderstandings there are even between two people who discuss a thing quite often – both of them assuming different things and neither of them discovering the discrepancy.
Yes, it was dangerous, but we are not put into this world, Mr. Burton, to avoid danger when an important fellow creature’s life is at stake. You understand me?
A man who has shot lions in large quantities has an unfair advantage over other men.
But who thinks of death in the middle of life?”-Mike RogersEndless Night by Agatha Christie
There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c’est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!
A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves
Why shouldn’t I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they’re loved and wanted and then show them that it’s all a sham.
Love can be a very frightening thing.”“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.
I loved her- I always loved her- no matter what she was-I wanted her safe- not shut up- a prisoner for life, eating her heart out. And we did keep her safe- for many years” Phillip Stark
Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.
One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.
All life is a jest, Imhotep – and it is death who laughs last. Do you not hear it at every feast? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.
I suppose what I really am is restless. I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything. I want to find something. Yes, that’s it, I want to find something.
Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.
… one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.
I’m going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He’s going to marry and stick to me.
Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before.
How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.
Whether he acted rightly or not, I have never been sure. It was the future of a child that was at stake. A child, he felt, ought to be given the benefit of a doubt.
…It was borne in upon her audience that the outside of Jane’s charming head was distinctly superior to the inside.
Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy.
But when you say crazy, that describes very well what the general appearance may be to ordinary, everyday people.
She’s very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don’t you agree?’ ‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. ‘I mean everyone’s interest must go somewhere.
You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them – and, that way she missed love.
For, once there’s a death, one doesn’t like to think there’s been harsh words spoken and no chance of taking them back.
To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.
Bad habit, lunch. A banana and a water biscuit is all any sane healthy man should need in the middle of the day.
It is so unkind–‘ ‘Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth!
Don’t you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child?Miss Bulstrode’s thoughts.
I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty—to one’s friends and one’s family and one’s caste.
Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddle-headed, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that.
It’s astonishing in this world how things don’t turn out at all the way you expect them to.
If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles one would hardly see anybody.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have the older she gets the more interested he is in her.
A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no aw no pity it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairingly acutely miserable racked with sorrow but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairingly acutely miserable racked with sorrow but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
The human mind prefers to be spoonfed with the thoughts of others but deprived of such nourishment it will reluctantly begin to think for itself- and such thinking remember is original thinking and may have valuable results.
We are the same people as we were at three six ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so perhaps at six or seven because we were not pretending so much then.
Truth however bitter can be accepted and woven into a design for living.
… go down to the country, take a house, get interested in local politics, in local scandal, in village gossip. Take an inquisitive and violent interest in your neighbours.
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.
There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.
I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.