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.
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
Very few of us are what we seem.
The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.
The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.
One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.
Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.
Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.
You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.
It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.
Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.
One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.
Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken
But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.
The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.
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.
Time is the best killer.
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.
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.
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.
I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.
To every problem, there is a most simple solution.
I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.
Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.
In the midst of life, we are in death.
Words, madmoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.
![Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.
[Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.]](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/agatha-christie-842.jpg)
Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them. [Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.]
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.
Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.
Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time the wish to kill-though not the will to kill.
If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything.
It's like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance.
An appreciative listener is always stimulating.
It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.
As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!
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
Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.
It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." ~ Poirot
But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.
![To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.
[author's dedication]](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/agatha-christie-859.jpg)
To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure. [author's dedication]
At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.
Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture. Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.
Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.
Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.
To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.
I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue.
If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it - often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.
What good is money if it can't buy happiness?
Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.
One little Indian left all alone, he went out and hanged himself and then there were none.
The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn.
I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.
A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.
Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!
It had come about exactly in the way things happened in books.
When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.
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.
They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.
People should be interested in books, not their authors.
I don't know. I don't know at all. And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea....
She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.
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.
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.
You should employ your little grey cells
One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer.
One of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again.
Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.
A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves
There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.
He laughs best who laughs at the end.
There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.
It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.
Fear is incomplete knowledge
People who can be very good can be very bad too.
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.
Be sure thy sin will find thee out.
Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.
Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts. -"The Blood-Stained Pavement
Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things...
To count - really and truly to count - a woman must have goodness or brains.
Evil is not any superhuman, but it is HUMAN.
It's so much nicer to be a secret and delightful sin to anybody than to be a feather in his cap.
Our weapon is our knowledge. But remember, it may be a knowledge we may not know that we possess.
Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.
Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?
For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away …
It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial.
You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.
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.
Difficulties are made to be overcome ~ Miss Felicity Lemon, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Plymouth Express
