Agatha Christie Quotes

I never gossip - but after all, a tongue is given one to speak with, and I'm not deaf mute.That you most certainly are not. A tongue, Henet, may sometimes be a weapon. A tongue may cause a death - may cause more than one death. I hope your tongue, Henet, has not caused a death.
Agatha Christie
... go down to the country, take a house, get interested in local politics, in local scandal, in village gossip. Take an inquisitive and violent interest in your neighbours.
Agatha Christie
Mon cher docteur! Do you not think I know the female mentality? The village gossip, it is based always, always on the relations of the sexes. If a man poisons his wife in order to travel to the North Pole or to enjoy the peace of a bachelor existence—it would not interest his fellow-villagers for a minute!
Agatha Christie
Truth however bitter can be accepted and woven into a design for living.
Agatha Christie
We are the same people as we were at three six ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so perhaps at six or seven because we were not pretending so much then.
Agatha Christie
The human mind prefers to be spoonfed 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.
Agatha Christie
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairingly 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
The human mind prefers to be spoonfed 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.
Agatha Christie
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairingly 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
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairingly 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
A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no aw no pity it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
Agatha Christie
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have the older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Agatha Christie
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles one would hardly see anybody.
Agatha Christie
It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to.
Agatha Christie
Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddle-headed, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that.
Agatha Christie
I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one's friends and one's family and one's caste.
Agatha Christie
What are the years from twenty to forty? Fettered and bound by personal and emotional relationships. That's bound to be. That's living. But later there's a new stage. You can think, observe life, discover something about other people and the truth about yourself. Life becomes real--significant. You see it as a whole. Not just one scene--the scene you, as an actor, are playing. No man or woman is actually himself (or herself) till after forty-five. That's when individuality has a chance.
Agatha Christie
But what really happens after you are dead - that is what I want to know?I cannot tell you Renisenb. You should ask a priest these questions.He would just give me the usual answers. I want to know.We shall none of us know until we are dead ourselves.
Agatha Christie
Don't you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child?Miss Bulstrode's thoughts.
Agatha Christie
It is so unkind--' 'Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth!
Agatha Christie
The innocent must not suffer.
Agatha Christie
Bad habit, lunch. A banana and a water biscuit is all any sane healthy man should need in the middle of the day.
Agatha Christie
I've always jumped on sentiment—and here I am being more sentimental than anybody. What idiots girls are! I've always thought so. I suppose I shall sleep with his photograph under my pillow, and dream about him all night. It's dreadful to feel you've been false to your principles.
Agatha Christie
In moments of great stress, the mind focuses itself upon some quite unimportant matter which is remembered long afterwards with the utmost fidelity, driven in, as it were, by the mental stress of the moment. It may be some quite irrelevant detail, like the pattern of a wallpaper, but it will never be forgotten.
Agatha Christie
An appreciative listener is always stimulating.
Agatha Christie
To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.
Agatha Christie
For, once there's a death, one doesn't like to think there's been harsh words spoken and no chance of taking them back.
Agatha Christie
To cry at will is not an easy accomplishment.
Agatha Christie
Sloppy crying had never helped anyone yet.
Agatha Christie
For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house!
Agatha Christie
I always feel that young doctors are only too anxious too experiment. After they've whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.
Agatha Christie
You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.
Agatha Christie
She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?' 'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere.
Agatha Christie
That is the word of reality - need.
Agatha Christie
Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy.
Agatha Christie
But when you say crazy, that describes very well what the general appearance may be to ordinary, everyday people.
Agatha Christie
I help those who can help themselves.
Agatha Christie
...It was borne in upon her audience that the outside of Jane's charming head was distinctly superior to the inside.
Agatha Christie
You are not the happy, unthinking child you have always appeared to be, accepting everything at its face value. You are not just one of the women of the household. You are Renisenb who wants to think for herself, who wonders about other people.
Agatha Christie
Whether he acted rightly or not, I have never been sure. It was the future of a child that was at stake. A child, he felt, ought to be given the benefit of a doubt.
Agatha Christie
Jealousy, you know, is usually not an affair of causes. It is much more-how shall I say?-fundamental than that. Based on the knowledge that one's love is not returned. And so one goes on waiting, watching, expecting...that the loved one will turn to someone else.
Agatha Christie
How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.
Agatha Christie
In a well-balanced, reasoning mind there is no such thing as an intuition - an inspired guess! You can guess, of course - and a guess is either right or wrong. If it is right you can call it an intuition. If it is wrong you usually do not speak of it again. But what is often called an intuition is really impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of a small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely - his experience obviates that - the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. But it is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience.
Agatha Christie
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.
Agatha Christie
I'm going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He's going to marry and stick to me.
Agatha Christie
I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue.
Agatha Christie
... one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.
Agatha Christie
Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.
Agatha Christie
I suppose what I really am is restless. I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything. I want to find something. Yes, that's it, I want to find something.
Agatha Christie
All life is a jest, Imhotep - and it is death who laughs last. Do you not hear it at every feast? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.
Agatha Christie
One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.
Agatha Christie
Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.
Agatha Christie
I loved her- I always loved her- no matter what she was-I wanted her safe- not shut up- a prisoner for life, eating her heart out. And we did keep her safe- for many years" Phillip Stark
Agatha Christie
Love can be a very frightening thing.”“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.
Agatha Christie
Why shouldn't I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they're loved and wanted and then show them that it's all a sham.
Agatha Christie
You say your life is your own. But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play--it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.
Agatha Christie
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
Agatha Christie
A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves
Agatha Christie
There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!
Agatha Christie
And families now, families who have been separated throughout the year, assemble once more together. Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy.
Agatha Christie