Agatha Christie Quotes

The bereaved had never any doubt about their dear ones' wishes and those wishes usually squared with their own inclinations.

A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.

You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?" It will not." If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me." I, also M. Ratchett." What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said.

Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.

But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.

Where do one's fears come from? Where do they shape themselves? Where do they hide before coming out into the open?

The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

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

It is deplorable...to remove all the romance - all the mystery!

The urge to write one's autobiography, so I have been told, overtakes everyone sooner or later.

I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one's friends and one's family and one's caste.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

One little Indian boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself and then there were none.

Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.

Any medical man who predicts exactly when a patient will die, or exactly how long he will live, is bound to make a fool of himself. The human factor is always incalculable. The weak have often unexpected powers of resistance, the strong sometimes succumb.

It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.

Sensationalism dies quickly, fear is long-lived.

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

More children suffer from interference than from non-interference.

I never can stand seeing people pleased with themselves,” said Joanna. “It arouses all my worst instincts.

To count - really and truly to count - a woman must have goodness or brains.

a great man always knows better than to explain unless an explanation is demanded. To rush into explanations and excuses is always a sign of weakness.

I didn't want to work. It was as simple as that. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing that the human race had unfortunately invented for itself.

Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.

To put it quite crudely ... the poor don't really know how the rich live, and the rich don't know how the poor live, and to find out is really enchanting to both of them.

God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!

Liking is more important than loving. It lasts. I want what is between us to last, Luke. I don't want us just to love each other and marry and get tired of each other and then want to marry some one else.

Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown.

Time is the best killer.

No innocent person ever has an alibi.

Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

It's so much nicer to be a secret and delightful sin to anybody than to be a feather in his cap.

Truth, however bitter, can be accepted, and woven into a design for living.

Things never come when they are expected.

Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time thewish to kill-though not the will to kill.

Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work....where crime is concerned, she's the goods.

Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them.

You don't realize what fine fighting material there is in age. ... You show me any one who's lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter - some one who's got the will to live.

Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life.

The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.

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.

The steamship whose machinery is broken may be brought into port and made fast to the dock. She is safe, but not sound. Repairs may last a long time. Christ designs to make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first - safety; sanctification gives us the second - soundness.

It's no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius- some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman - a tradesman in a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas, but you must submit them to the discipline of form.

I'm afraid of death... Yes, but that doesn't stop death coming.

The truth often does sound unconvincing.

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her.

I'm not often bored,' I assured her. "Life's not long enough for that.