Self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel about it as Europeans do.

Talk and tea is his specialty," said Giles. "He has about five cups of tea a day. But he works splendidly when we are looking.

I just woke up feeling happy this morning. You know those days when everything in the world seems right.

Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]

It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.

I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.