Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Agatha Christie

200 quotes

“It merely confirmed in him his long-held belief that you should never believe anything anyone said without first checking it. Suspect everybody, had been for many years, if not his whole life, one of his first axioms.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mrs. Oliver in her own opinion was famous for her intuition. One intuition succeeded another with remarkable rapidity, and Mrs. Oliver always claimed the right to justify the particular intuition which turned out to be right!”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, what are you doing? What have you done?” “I am sitting in this char,” said Poirot. “Thinking,” he added. “Is that all?” said Mrs. Oliver. “It is the important thing,” said Poirot.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tout de même,” said Poirot, “since I cannot find anything, eh bien, then the logic falls out of the window.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my end is my beginning — that's what people are always saying. But what does it mean? And just where does my story begin? I must try and think...”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without interest (hers not the type to wonder why!) but with perfect efficiently, Miss Lemon had fulfilled her task.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Take this Hercules — this hero! Hero, indeed! What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the sensible and the competent have been given tongues by le bon Dieu — and they do not always employ their tongues wisely.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had not remembered her name, but he had seen her dance — had been carried away and fascinated by the supreme art that can make you forget art.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the seat opposite him was an American tourist. The pattern of his clothes, of his overcoat, the grip he carried, down to his hopeful friendliness and his naïve absorption in the scenery, even the guidebook in his hand, all gave him away and proclaimed him a small town American seeing Europe for the first time. In another minute or so, Poirot judged, he would break into speech. His wistful dog-like expression could not be mistaken.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And then, startling in its crisp transatlantic tones, a voice said: “Stick ’em up.” They swerved around. Schwartz, dressed in a peculiarly vivid set of striped pyjamas stood in the doorway. In his hand he held an automatic. “Stick ’em up, guys. I’m pretty good at shooting.” He pressed the trigger — and a bullet sang past the big man's ear and buried itself in the woodwork of the window. Three pairs of hands were raised rapidly.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Harold Waring, like many other Englishmen, was a bad linguist.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is he then an unhappy man?” Poirot said: “So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.” The nun said softly: “Ah, a rich man…”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know there’s a proverb which says, “To err is human” but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But when investing money, keep, I beg of you, Hastings, strictly to the conservative.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They are so busy knocking that they do not notice that the door is open!”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember, he was a fanatic, and there is no fanatic like a religious fanatic.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never mind. I knew — that was the great thing.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mademoiselle,” I said, “it is sometimes difficult for a dog to find a scent, but once he has found it, nothing on earth will make him leave it! That is if he is a good dog! And I, mademoiselle, I, Hercule Poirot, am a very good dog.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never do I deceive you, Hastings. I only permit you to deceive yourself.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The English are very stupid,” said Poirot. “They think that they can deceive anyone but that no one can deceive them.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have an excellent heart, my friend — but your grey cells are in a deplorable condition.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not if the butcher had become a butcher simply in order to have a chance of murdering the baker. One must always look one step behind, my friend.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I aroused Judith's contempt by asking what good all this was likely to do to mankind? There is no question that annoys your true scientist more.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This, Hastings, will be my last case. It will be, too, my most interesting case — and my most interesting criminal.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always been so sure — too sure... But now I am very humble and I say like a little child: "I do not know...”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here — and our last ... They were good days, Yes, they have been good days...”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Plymouth, Gwenda thought, as she moved forward obediently in the queu for Passports and Customs, was probably not the best of England.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, of course, Gwenda dear, you can always do that when you've exhausted every other line of approach, but I always think myself it's better to examine the simplest and most commonplace explanations first.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's not impossible my dear. It's just a very remarkable coincidence — and remarkable coincidences do happen.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These little things are very significant.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Murder isn't — it really isn't — a thing to tamper with lightheartedly.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What governs one's choice of memories? Life is like sitting in a cinema. Flick! Here am I, a child eating éclairs on my birthday. Flick! Two years have passed and I am sitting on my grandmother's lap, being solemnly trussed up as a chicken just arrived from Mr Whiteley's, and almost hysterical with the wit of the joke. Just moments — and in between long empty spaces of months or even years.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We never know the whole man, though sometimes, in quick flashes, we know the true man. I think, myself, that one's memories represent those moments which, insignificant as they may seem, nevertheless represent the inner self and oneself as most really oneself. I am today the same person as that solemn little girl with pale flaxen sausage-curls. The house in which the spirit dwells, grows, develops instincts and tastes and emotions and intellectual capacities, but I myself, the true Agatha, am the same. I do not know the whole Agatha. The whole Agatha, so I believe, is known only to God.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life. I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a very happy childhood. I had a home and a garden that I loved; a wise and patient Nanny; as father and mother two people who loved each other dearly and made a success of their marriage and of parenthood. Looking back I feel that our house was truly a happy house. That was largely due to my father, for my father was a very agreeable man.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The quality of agreeableness Is not much stressed nowadays. People tend to ask if a man is clever, industrious, if he contributes to the well-being of the community, if he ‘counts’ in the scheme of things.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Servants, of course, were not a particular luxury–it was not a case of only the rich having them; the only difference was that the rich had more.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We had three servants, which was a minimum then.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Looking back, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have contemplated having both a nurse and a servant, but they were considered essentials of life in those days, and were the last things we would have thought of dispensing with. To have committed the extravagance of a car, for instance, would never have entered our minds. Only the rich had cars.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I — I don’t regret what I did. I think that you are a kind man, Mr. Poirot, and that possibly you might understand. You see, I’ve been so terribly afraid.” “Afraid?” “Yes, it’s difficult for a gentleman to understand, I expect. But you see, I’m not a clever woman at all, and I’ve no training and I’m getting older — and I’m so terrified for the future. I’ve not been able to save anything — how could I with Emily to be cared for? — and as I get older and more incompetent there won’t be any one who wants me. They’ll want somebody young and brisk. I’ve — I’ve known so many people like I am — nobody wants you and you live in a one room and you can’t have a fire or any warmth and not very much to eat and at last you can’t even pay the rent on your room … There are Institutions, of course, but it’s not very easy to get into them unless you have influential friends, and I haven’t. There are a good many others situated like I am — poor companions — untrained useless women with nothing to look forward to but a deadly fear…”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life seems to me to consist of three parts: the absorbing and usually enjoyable present which rushes on from minute to minute with fatal speed; the future, dim and uncertain, for which one can make any number of interesting plans, the wilder and more improbable the better, since — as nothing will turn out as you expect it to do — you might as well have the fun of planning anyway; and thirdly, the past, the memories and realities that are the bedrock of one's present life, brought back suddenly by a scent, the shape of a hill, an old song — some triviality that makes one suddenly say "I remember…" with a peculiar and quite unexplainable pleasure.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source