Sad Cypress

Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]

To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..

The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.

The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One does not live because one's reason assents to living. People who, as we say, 'would be better dead,' don’t want to die! People who apparently have got everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they have not got the energy to fight.

I find most of the human race extraordinarily repulsive. They probably reciprocate this feeling.

When you're in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I've always thought so.

You weren't quite accurate just now." "I? Not accurate?" Poirot sounded affronted.

Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?... Because it is sometimes necessary.

A little difficult to know where you were with Elinor. She didn't reveal much of what she thought and felt about things. He liked that about her. He hated people who reeled off their thoughts and feelings to you, who took it for granted that you wanted to know all their mechanism. Reserve was always more interesting.

Everything costs so much—clothes and one’s face—and just silly things like cinemas and cocktails—and even gramophone records!’ Roddy

.... she was like a flower. And suddenly, for a vivid minute, Hercule Poirot had a new conception of the dead girl. In that halting rustic voice the girl Mary lived and bloomed again. "She was like a flower." There was suddenly a poignant sense of loss, of something exquisite destroyed. In his mind phrase after phrase succeeded each other. Peter Lord's "She was a nice kid." Nurse Hopkins's "She could have gone on the films any time." Mrs. Bishop's venomous "No patience with her airs and graces." And now last, putting to shame, laying aside those other views, the quiet, wondering, "She was like a flower.

A volte si apre un abisso fra il passato e il futuro. Quando una persona si è incamminata nella valle all'ombra della morte, e ne torna fuori alla luce del sole...è allora, mon cher, che comincia una nuova vita. Il passato non serve più.

Un pò difficile capire come stavano le cose quando c'era di mezzo Elinor. In realtà non rivelava mai molto di ciò che pensava o sentiva. E questo gli piaceva in lei. Perché detestava le persone che vuotavano il sacco, e rivelavano subito le proprie opinioni o manifestavano i propri sentimenti...le persone che davano praticamente per scontato che l'interlocutore desiderasse sapere com'era articolato il loro meccanismo interiore. Il riserbo era sempre stato più interessante.