Top 382 Quotes & Sayings by Agatha Christie - Page 2

To win a war is as disasterous as to lose one.

With thought, all problems can be resolved.

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

I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.

A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man.

You want beauty,' said Hercules Poirot. 'Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth. I want always truth.

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

One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone.

When the fact doesn't meet the theory then let go the theory.

Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.

Things never come when they are expected.

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.

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.

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.

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

I'm sure you have a theme: the theme of your life. You can embellish it or desecrate it, but it's your theme, and as long as you follow it, you will experience harmony and peace of mind.

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed 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.

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.

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

Time is the best killer.

It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.

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

fiction is founded on truth....unless things did happen,people couldn't think of them.

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.

Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.

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]

There is no telling what a human character is. Until the test comes. To most of us the test comes early in life. A man is confronted quite soon with the necessity to stand on his own feet, to face dangers and difficulties and to take his own line of dealing with them. It may be the straight way, it may be the crooked way --- whichever it is, a man usually learns early just what he is made of.

Time does not dispose of a question - it only presents it anew in a different guise.

To every problem, there is a most simple solution.

I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.

Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?

The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.

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

One never quite allows for the moron in our midst.

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 have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's.

Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

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.

Of course I despise money when I haven't got any. It's the only dignified thing to do.

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.

I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue.

You'll be glad too, when the end comes.

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

With method and logic one can accomplish anything.

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

Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!

It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to.

Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition-and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do-clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth-the naked shining truth.

Surfing is like that. You are either vigorously cursing or else you are idiotically pleased with yourself.

For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away.

The out-of-date returns in due course as the picturesque.

Don't think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind.

One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.

When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.

I married an archeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.

Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken

There are questions that you don't ask because you're afraid of the answers to them.

... there are many to whom money has no personal appeal, but who can be tempted by the power it confers.