The chains of habit. We work to attain an object, and the object gained, we find that what we miss is the daily toil.
Miss Marple was an attractive old lady, tall and thin, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and a gentle, rather fussy manner. Her blue eyes often had a little twinkle in them.
My boy, I know what I’m talking about. Mind you, I’m not saying marriage doesn’t come hard on a fellow at first. It does. Fellow says to himself, damn it all, he says, I can’t call my soul my own! But he gets broken in. It’s all discipline.” Luke.
Expect me when you see me.
Next year, maybe, she will look back on the experience and tell her friends that it was “fun”; but oh, the pity of it, not to gather the flowers of the Present, to let them wither, and never pluck them till they are dried wrecks of the Past!
I think you’re both behaving like a pair of idiots.
People take you at your own valuation.
One’s body is a nuisance, M. Poirot, especially when it gets the upper hand. One is conscious of nothing else – whether the pain will hold off or not – nothing else seems to matter.
What was one to do, thought Adela, with someone who didn’t talk gardening or dogs – those standbys of rural conversation.
Mrs. Baker’s social manner was almost robotlike in its perfection. All her comments and remarks were natural, normal, everyday currency, but one had a suspicion that the whole thing was like an actor playing a part for perhaps the seven hundredth time. It was an automatic performance, completely divorced from what Mrs. Baker might really have been thinking or feeling.
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, he’d have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
Do you know what I’ve been thinking, Tommy?” “It’s impossible to say,” replied her husband. “You think of so many things, and you think of them all at once.
I think trees are much nicer than people, more restful.
Mr Ratchett wanted to see the world. He was hampered by knowing no languages. I acted more as a courier than a secretary”.
Don’t hiss at me, Pagett,” I said, drawing back a little, “and do control your breathing. Your idea is absurd. Why should they want to have a secret meeting in the middle of the night? If they’d anything to say to each other, they could hobnob over beef tea in a perfectly casual and natural manner.
The things that are worthwhile are usually accomplished by someone with enthusiasm and drive...
On my way home, I ran into Miss Hartnell and she detained me at least ten minutes, declaiming in her deep bass voice against the improvidence and ungratefulness of the lower classes. The crux of the matter seemed to be that The Poor did not want Miss Hartnell in their houses. My sympathies were entirely on their side.
You’re apt to be done down if you speak nothing but good American.
M. Ratchett spoke no French.
Surely, I thought, in a world where man has been able to put satellites in the sky and where men talk big about visiting the stars, there must be something that rouses you, that makes your heart beat, that’s worthwhile searching all over the world to find!