Murder at the Vicarage

The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.

I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.

At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.

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.

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.

It's so much nicer to be a secret and delightful sin to anybody than to be a feather in his cap.

I was thinking, that when my time comes, I should be sorry if the only plea I had to offer was that of justice. Because it might mean that only justice would be meted out to me.

What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's.

Was bad language used?” asked Colonel Melchett. “It depends on what you call bad language.” “Could you understand it?” I asked. “Of course I could understand it.” “Then it couldn’t have been bad language,” I said. Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me suspiciously. “A refined lady,” I explained, “is naturally unacquainted with bad language.

One's own troubles sharpen one's eyes sometimes.

I daresay idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn't it.

I use the word drifted advisedly. I have read novels in which young people are described as bursting with energy—joie de vivre, the magnificent vitality of youth … Personally, all the young people I come across have the air of animal wraiths.

They say all the world loves a lover—apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth.

Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking.

Marriage, I have always held, is a serious affair, to be entered into only after long deliberation and forethought, and suitability of tastes adn inclinations is the most important consideration.

Inestimable harm may be done by foolish wagging of tongues in ill-natured gossip

We think with horror now of the days when we burnt witches. I believe the day will come when we will shudder to think that we ever hanged criminals.

Nothing, I believe, is so full of life under the microscope as a drop of water from a stagnant pool.

A very correct butler opened the door, with just the right amount of gloom in his bearing.

There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true.

Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with—an omission which was discovered only when the moment for eating them arrived.

Nothing is more dangerous than the well-meant efforts of the younger generation to assist you and show their sympathy.

Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle appealing manner- Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is the more dangerous.

I had just finished carving some boiled beef (remarkably tough by the way) and on resuming my seat I remarked, in a spirit most unbecoming to my cloth, that anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service.

It's awfully easy to appear silly, Mr. Clement. It's one of the easiest things in the world.

What are you doing this afternoon, Griselda?” “My duty,” said Griselda. “My duty as the Vicaress. Tea and scandal at four thirty.

Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.

and proceeding to follow the example of the devil in quoting Scripture for his own ends I added: “She looketh to the ways of her household….

as long as Mary can’t cook and has those awful manners—well, we’re safe, nobody else would have her.” I perceived that my wife’s methods of housekeeping were not so entirely haphazard as I had imagined. A certain amount of reasoning underlay them. Whether it was worthwhile having a maid at the price of her not being able to cook, and having a habit of throwing dishes and remarks at one with the same disconcerting abruptness, was a debatable matter.