Quotes from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“An appreciative listener is always stimulating.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“... one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined---sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured---so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Mrs. Cavendish: I am charming to my friends one day, and forget all about them the next.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandyfied little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Hasting - There are times when it is one's duty to assert oneself.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“If the fact will not fit the theory - let the theory go”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“So you think that the coco- mark well what I say, Hastings, the coco- contained strychnine?"
"Of course! That salt on the tray, what else could it have been?"
"It might have been salt." replied Poirot placidly.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Miss Howard: Like a good detective story myself. Lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last Chapter. Everyone dumbfounded. Real crime - you'd know at once.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“My dear Poirot, it's not for me to dictate to you. You have a right to your own opinion, just as I have mine.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Oh, my friend, have I not said to you all along that I have no proofs. It is one thing to know that a man is guilty, it is quite another matter to prove him so. And, in this case, there is terribly little evidence. That is the whole trouble.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend,” observed Poirot philosophically. “You cannot mix up sentiment and reason.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“I shall never forget my first sight of Mary Cavendish. Her tall, slender form, outlined against the bright light; the vivid sense of slumbering fire that seemed to find expression only in those wonderful tawny eyes of hers, remarkable eyes, different from any other woman's that I have ever known; the intense power of stillness she possessed, which nevertheless conveyed the impression of a wild untamed spirit in an exquisitely civilised body—all these things are burnt into my memory. I shall never forget them.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method. My system is based on his—though of course I have progressed rather further. He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“The mind is confused? Is it not so? Take time, mon ami. You are agitated; you are excited—it is but natural. Presently, when we are calmer, we will arrange the facts, neatly, each in his proper place. We will examine—and reject. Those of importance we will put on one side; those of no importance, pouf! blow them away!”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Yes, he is intelligent. But we must be more intelligent. We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all."
I acquiesced.
"There, mon ami, you will be of great assistance to me."
I was pleased with the compliment. There had been times when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth.
"Yes" he continued staring at me thoughtfully, "you will be invaluable”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them—and, that way she missed love.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Lawrence arrossì, imbarazzato, poi sorrise. Un uomo innamorato è sempre uno spettacolo penoso.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“The mind is confused? Is it not so? Take time, mon ami. You are agitated; you are excited—it is but natural. Presently, when we are calmer, we will arrange the facts, neatly, each in his proper place. We will examine—and reject. Those of importance we will put on one side; those of no importance, pouf!”—he screwed up his cherub-like face, and puffed comically enough—“blow them away!” “That’s”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“The mind is confused? Is it not so? Take time, mon ami. You are agitated; you are excited—it is but natural. Presently, when we are calmer, we will arrange the facts, neatly, each in his proper place. We will examine—and reject. Those of importance we will put on one side; those of no importance, pouf!”—he screwed up his cherub-like face, and puffed comically enough—“blow them”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

About the author

Popular quotes

“All too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows”
― Martin Luther King Jr., quote from Letter from the Birmingham Jail

“As he sat at his desk in his comfortable office armchair, he allowed his body to sink into a creeping state of drowsiness, and for a few moments enjoyed the sensation of dozing off. It was a sensation akin to numbness, as if his hands and feet were melting away.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika

“Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am an animal, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are fake niggers; maniacs, savages, misers, all of you.

- Bad Blood”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell

“That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.

It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.

Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith.

Why? The truth is plain:

We were not born to be niggers.”
― David Simon, quote from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood

“I rested my forehead on a grease spot I'd left on the window earlier. The airlines, I thought, must have custodians who clean the windows, or there'd be an inches-thick layer of goo on them from people like me.
That thought was proof positive that I shouldn't be allowed to stay up for more than eighteen hours at a time. I have a bad habit of following every thought to its miserable, pathetic little end when I'm tired. I don't mean to. It's just that my brain and my tongue get unhinged. Though some of my less charitable acquaintances would say this condition didn't require sleep deprivation.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.