“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work....where crime is concerned, she's the goods.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“No innocent person ever has an alibi.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“One does see so much evil in a village,' murmured Miss Marple in an explanatory voice.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“No, I wouldn't. I wouldn’t tell a soul.'
'People who use that phrase are always the last to live up to it.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Because when you’re in love, you think you’re invincible. It blinds you. And you don’t seem to care.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“So I suggest you cut the cackle and come to the horses.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Melchett said gloomily, 'Well, we know where we are -- or rather, where we aren't!'
'Where we aren't expresses it rather better, sir.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“People who ought to die of shock and exposure don't die of shock and exposure, et cetera, et cetera. The human frame is tougher than one can imagine possible. Moreover, in my experience, a physical shock is more often fatal than a mental shock.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Yes. She rebelled, I suppose, against being made to live in the past. After all, there's a time for everything. You can't sit in the house with the blinds down forever.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“She belonged to the class that wear their best clothes, however unsuitable to the occasion. Last year, you know, we had a picnic outing at Scrantor Rocks. You'd be surprised at the unsuitable clothes the girls wore. Foulard dresses and patent-leather shoes and quite elaborate hats, some of them. For climbing about over rocks and in gorse and heather. And the young men in their best suits. Of course, hiking's different again. That's practically a uniform, and girls don't seem to realize that shorts are very unbecoming unless they are very slender.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“When people ask “Do you put real people in your books?” the answer is that, for me, it is quite impossible to write about anyone I know, or have ever spoken to, or indeed have even heard about! For some reason, it kills them for me stone dead.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“The vicar, a gentle, middle-aged man, was always the last to hear anything.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“With a sigh the young mother returned to the hearthrug and, by way of carrying out her principles of stern neglect, butted her son three times in the stomach so that he caught hold of her hair and pulled it with gleeful yells. Then they rolled over and over in a grand rough-and-tumble until the door opened”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“La verità è che la maggior parte della gente, non esclusi i poliziotti, si fida troppo di questo mondo perverso. Crede troppo a quanto viene loro raccontato. Io no. Mi dispiace, ma io voglio sempre rendermi conto personalmente delle cose.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Activity was always to Inspector Slack’s taste. To rush off in a car, to silence rudely those people who were anxious to tell him things, to cut short conversations on the plea of urgent necessity. All this was the breath of life to Slack.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Mrs. Bantry reflected a minute and then applied an urgent conjugal elbow to her sleeping spouse.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Det kan du stole på. Liker du detektivfortellinger? Det gjør jeg. Jeg leser alle sammen, og har navnetrekkene til Dorothy Sayers og Agatha Christie og Dickson Carr og H.C. Bailey.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Either her dream had taken a very odd turn or else - or else Mary had really rushed into the room and had said (incredible! fantastic!) that there was a body in the library.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“One does see so much evil in a village,” murmured Miss Marple in an explanatory voice.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Here was a man who would never rail against fate but accept it and pass on to victory”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Felébredéskor az álmok gyakran csodálatosan valódinak hatnak. Az ember meg van győződve arról, hogy a dolgok valóban megtörténtek.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“for a minute her good-natured blue eyes were hard and sharp; she was the female fighting for existence—“that”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“A maguk… veszekedései jellemzőek a házasság első hónapjaiban. Teljesen… mások, mint egy törvénytelen kapcsolatnál. Tudja, azt mondják… és azt hiszem, ez igaz, hogy csak akkor lehet igazán nekimenni valakinek, ha az ember össze van vele házasodva. Ha nincsen… törvényes kötelék, akkor az emberek sokkal óvatosabbak; állandóan bizonygatják önmaguknak, hogy minden milyen szép és jó. Igazolniuk kell magukat önmaguk előtt. Nem mernek veszekedni! Észrevettem, hogy a házastársak még élvezik is a csatáikat, és… a megfelelő kibéküléseket.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“Colonel Melchett silently marvelled at the amount of aids to beauty that women could use. Rows of jars of face cream, cleansing cream, vanishing cream, skin-feeding cream! Boxes of different shades of powder. An untidy heap of every variety of lipstick. Hair lotions and “brightening” applications. Eyelash black, mascara, blue stain for under the eyes, at least twelve different shades of nail varnish, face tissues, bits of cotton wool, dirty powder-puffs. Bottles of lotions—astringent, tonic, soothing, etc. “Do you mean to say,” he murmured feebly, “that women use all these things?” Inspector Slack, who always knew everything, kindly enlightened him. “In private life, sir, so to speak, a lady keeps to one or two distinct shades, one for evening, one for day. They know what suits them and they keep to it. But these professional girls, they have to ring a change, so to speak. They do exhibition dances, and one night it’s a tango and the next a crinoline Victorian dance and then a kind of Apache dance and then just ordinary ballroom, and, of course, the makeup varies a good bit.” “Good lord!” said the Colonel. “No wonder the people who turn out these creams and messes make a fortune.” “Easy money, that’s what it is,” said Slack. “Easy money. Got to spend a bit in advertisement, of course.” Colonel”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Body in the Library
“I should give myself completely into your hands—but who are you? I do not trust you. Not once to trust, is that my love for you, my joy in you? Do I not trust every valiant man, and not you, my soul? Your hand lies heavy on me, but I will, I will. Have I not sought to love men and trust them, and should I not do this with you?”
― C.G. Jung, quote from The Red Book: Liber Novus
“Most adults never master a foreign language, especially the phonology—hence the ubiquitous foreign accent.”
― Steven Pinker, quote from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
“You are just as annoyingly cocky as you were nine years ago.”
“Yes,” Kyle’s gaze fell to her lips. “And we both know how that turned out.”
― Julie James, quote from About That Night
“..fresh friends from completely different worlds faced with the hard shapings of truth and deceit, of right and wrong, and of the equivalent damage when high expectations and low expectations are devastatingly unmet.”
― Christopher Scotton, quote from The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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