Beneath her self-control, though he did not guess it, was the impatience of the keen brain watching a slower brain laboriously cover the ground it had already traversed in a flash.
I hate mourning,” she said. “It always smells of moth balls because it’s been laid up somewhere.” “You don’t need to go on wearing mourning. It’s only to go to the funeral in,” said Tommy. “Oh no, I know that. In a minute or two I’m going to go up and put on a scarlet jersey just to cheer things up. You can make me another White Lady.” “Really, Tuppence, I had no idea that funerals would bring out this party feeling.
Wherever there is human nature, there is drama.
Men, they never think.
You must remember, too,” he added, “that we deal with no ordinary criminal, but with the second greatest brain in the world.” I forbore to pander to his conceit by asking the obvious question.
She had often been alone in the house before – but she had never before been so conscious of being alone in it.
Do not antagonize your son! He is of an age to choose for himself. Because his choice is not your choice, do not assume that you must be right. If it is a misfortune – then accept misfortune. Be at hand to aid him when he needs aid. But do not turn him against you.
She was a very good, kind woman. I could not have continued to live in the same house with her, but I did recognize her intrinsic worth.
We will sit here and drink coffee, and you shall all three listen to Hercule Poirot while he gives you a lecture on crime.
The Beddingfeld girl was deep in conversation with the missionary parson, Chichester. Women always flutter round parsons.
This was genius at close quarters, and genius had that something above normal in it that was a great strain upon the ordinary mind and feeling. All five were different from each other, yet each had that curious quality of burning intensity, the single-mindedness of purpose that made such a terrifying impression. She did not know whether it were a quality of brain or rather a quality of outlook, of intensity. But each of them, she thought, was in his or her way a passionate idealist.
Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea has infinitely more variety.
People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something.
Suzanne likes thrills, but she hates being uncomfortable.
Why do you decry the world we live in? There are good people in it. Isn’t muddle a better breeding ground for kindliness and individuality than a world order that’s 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 who’ve said goodbye to pity and understanding and sympathy.
Have you ever reflected, Madame, on the enormous part that Hearsay plays in life. “Mr. A said,” “Mrs. B. told us.” “Miss C. explained why –” and so on. And if the known facts seem to fit with what we have been told, then we never question them. There are so many things that do not concern us, and so we do not bother to uncover the actual facts.
What an awful place to live in England is,... If it isn’t snowing or raining or blowing it’s misty. And if the sun does shine it’s so cold that you can’t feel your fingers or toes.
It’s often when you’re talking over things that you seem to see your way clear. Your mind gets made up for you sometimes without your knowing how it’s happened. Talking leads to a lot of things one way or another.
Every one’s got their own ways of working. I know that. I give my inspectors a free hand always. Every one’s got to find out for themselves what method suits them best.
Well, you can’t go about having blood feuds and stabbing each other like Crosicans or the Mafia,” said the Colonel. “Say what you like, trial by jury is a sound system.