Murder in Mesopotamia

As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife! Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands. Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.

A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.

I'm not often bored,' I assured her. "Life's not long enough for that.

You see, I am not very good in company. I am clumsy. I am shy. [...] I always say the wrong thing. I upset water jugs. I am unlucky." "We all do these things when we are young. The poise, the savoir faire, comes later.

The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.

There's a convention that one doesn't speak ill of the dead. That's stupid, I think. The truth's always the truth. On the whole it's better to keep your mouth shut about living people. You might conceivably injure them. The dead are past that. But the harm they've done lives after them sometimes.

Mon ami, let this be a lesson to you. You are a man. Behave, then, like a man! It is against Nature for a man to grovel. Women and Nature have almost exactly the same reactions! Remember it is better to take the largest plate within reach and fling it at a woman's head than it is to wriggle like a worm whenever she looks at you!

Archaeologists only look at what lies beneath their feet. The sky and the heavens don't exist for them.

It seems odd that as far as I know nobody has yet been murdered for having too perfect a character! And yet perfection is undoubtedly an irritating thing!

I joke, mademoiselle," he said, "and I laugh. But there are some things that are no joke. There are things that my profession has taught me. And one of these things, the most terrible thing, is this: murder is a habit...

Somehow, the more I get older, and the more I see of people and sadness and illness and everything, the sorrier I get for everyone.

After all, perhaps dirt isn't really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe.

In my opinion, the state of mind of a community is always directly due to the influence of the man at the top.

She's not sensual. She doesn't want affairs. It's just cold-blooded experiment on her part and the fun of stirring people up and setting them against each other. She dabbled in that too. She's the sort of woman who's never had a row with anyone in her life--but rows always happen where she is! She makes them happen. She's kind of female Iago. She must have drama. But she doesn't want to be involved herself. She's always outside pulling strings--looking on--enjoying it!

Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature.

Nurse Leatheran has been giving me valuable information about the various members of the expedition. Incidentally I have learnt a good deal - about the victim. And the victim, mademoiselle, is very often the clue to the mystery.

Loyalty it is a pestilential thing in crime. Again and again it obscures the truth.

If my Rolls-Royce splashes you with mud as you’re waiting for a bus, you’ll know that I’ve taken to crime.

It was due to his tact, to his judgment, to his sympathetic manipulation of human beings that the atmosphere had always been such a happy one... If there was a change, therefore, the change must be due to the man at the top.

We do all these things when we are young. The poise, the savoir faire, it comes later.

I think Mrs. Leidner seems happier already from just talking about it. That's always a help, you know. It's bottling things up that makes them get on your nerves.

Men don’t understand how their mannerisms can get on women’s nerves so that you feel you just have to snap. I thought I’d just mention that to Mr. Poirot some time.

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.

A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life.

Sheila's about the only young girl in this place and she naturally assumes that she ought to have it all her own way with the young things in trousers. Naturally it annoys her when a woman, who in her view is middle-aged and who has already two husbands to her credit, comes along and licks her on her own ground. [...] No, I think it's age daring to defeat youth that annoys her so much!

But women can put up with a lot when they've got what they want.

There is no hatred so great as that of a man who has been made to a love a woman against his will.

nerves? I looked up the word allumeuse that