Quotes by Agatha Christie

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 cant help looking like a sheep.

Oh! Do not excite yourself. Shall I say that he interested me because he was trying to grow a mustache and as yet the result is poor. Poirot stroked his own magnificent mustache tenderly. It is an art, he murmured, the growing of the mustache! I have sympathy for all who attempt it.

Bottled, was he? Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishmans sympathy for alcoholic excess. Oh, well, cant judge a fellow by what he does when hes drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.

A statesman in these days has a difficult task. He has to pursue the policy he deems advantageous to his country, but he has at the same time to recognize the force of popular feeling. Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddleheaded, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that.

How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politicians life. He has to bow to the countrys feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.

I will only ask you to believe one thing. I have faith in myself. I believe that I am the man to guide England through the days of crisis that I see coming. If I did not honestly believe that I am needed by my country to steer the ship of state, I would not have done what I have done--made the best of both worlds--saved myself from disaster by a clever trick.My lord, if you could not make the best of both worlds, you could not be a politician.

There are questions that you dont ask because youre afraid of the answers to them.

Women were very queer. Unexpectedly cruel and unexpectedly kind.

I am pointing to you that under these conditions--mental strain, physical malaise--it is highly probable that dislikes that were before merely mild and disagreements that were trivial might suddenly assume a more serious note. The result of pretending to be a more amiable, a more forgiving, a more high-minded person than one really is, has sooner or later the effect of causing one to behave as a more disagreeable, a more ruthless and an altogether more unpleasant person than is actually the case! If you dam the stream of natural behavior, mon ami, sooner or later the dam bursts and cataclysm occurs.

The only clue to what is in peoples minds is in their behavior. If a man behaves strangely, oddly, is not himself--Then you suspect him?No. That is just what I mean. A man whose mind is evil and whose intentions are evil is conscious of that fact and he knows that he must conceal it all costs. He dare not, therefore, afford any unusual behavior.

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.

Ive 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.

Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent.Mrs. Allerton said cheerfully: You’d rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples—just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds.The young man directed his scowl in her direction. I think human beings matter more than stones.

Why do you decry the world we live in? There are good people in it. Isnt muddle a better breeding ground for kindliness and individuality than a world order thats imposed, a world order that may be right today and wrong tomorrow? I would rather have a world of kindly, faulty, human beings, than a world of superior robots whove said goodbye to pity and understanding and sympathy.

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.

Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.

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, hed have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.