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 behaviour, mon ami, sooner or later the dam bursts and a cataclysm occurs!
You console me a little, but only a little,’ said Poirot.
Aren’t people just like gramophone records?
Lydia said sharply: “No. Evil is not only in ones mind – evil exists. You seem to have no consciousness of the evilness in the world. I have. I can feel it.
She breathed an enormous sigh, looked at Poirot, Looked away, and suddenly blurted out, “You’re too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don’t want to be rude but – there it is. You’re too old. I’m really sorry.” She turned abruptly and blundered out of the room, rather like a desperate moth in lamplight. Poirot, his mouth open, heard the bang of the front door. He ejaculated: “Non d’un nom d’un nom...
Love is not everything, Mademoiselle,′ Poirot said gently. ‘It is only when we are young that we think it is.
When a man has a charming, gracious, intelligent wife, he’s no business to treat her badly.
It’s a classic, isn’t it, sir?” said Hay. “Third Programme stuff. I don’t listen to the Third Programme.
It’s so difficult, isn’t it, to get to know people when there is a murder? And quite impossible to have any really intellectual conversation.
We had reached Leastways Cottage, and Poirot ushered me upstairs to his own room. He offered me one of the tiny Russian cigarettes he himself occasionally smoked. I was amused to notice that he stowed away the used matches most carefully in a little china pot. My momentary annoyance vanished.
Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.
What,” asked Dr. Constantine with interest, “does a pukka sahib mean?” “It means,” said Poirot, “that Miss Debenham’s father and brothers were at the same kind of school as Colonel Arbuthnot.
Nowadays young people seem to think they can just go about doing anything they choose.
Sanders was hanged,” said Miss Marple crisply. “And a good job too. I have never regretted my part in bringing that man to justice. I’ve no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment.
Every revolution has had its honest men. They are soon disposed of afterwards.
We had a lazy voyage, stopping at Fiji and other islands, and finally arrived at Honolulu. It was far more sophisticated than we had imagined with masses of hotels and roads and motor-cars. We arrived in the early morning, got into our rooms at the hotel, and straight away, seeing out of the window the people surfing on the beach, we rushed down, hired our surf-boards, and plunged into the sea.
I do really believe that, like so many liars, there is a real substratum of truth behind her lies.
I’ve often noticed that once coincidences start happening they go on happening in the most extraordinary way.
It’s the muddle-headed loyalty of friends and relations that makes a detective’s life so difficult.
That’s queer,” I ejaculated suddenly beneath my breath.