Top 500 Agatha Christie Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Oude zonden hebben lange schaduwen.”

— Agatha Christie

152. “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.”

— Agatha Christie

153. “There is something about conscious tact that is very irritating.”

— Agatha Christie

154. “Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.”

— Agatha Christie

155. “There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.”

— Agatha Christie

156. “Look at the moon up there. You see her very plainly, don’t you? She’s very real. But if the sun were to shine you wouldn’t be able to see her at all. It was rather like that. I was the moon... When the sun came out, Simon couldn’t see me anymore... He was dazzled. He couldn’t see anything but the sun – Linnet.”

— Agatha Christie

157. “Young men are sadly degenerate nowadays.”

— Agatha Christie

158. “In the second place the seat next to the driving seat was encumbered by several maps, a handbag, three novels, and a large bag of apples. Mrs. Oliver was partial to apples and has indeed been known to eat as many as five pounds straight off while composing the complicated plot of The Death in the Drain Pipe, coming to herself with a start and an incipient stomach-ache an hour and ten minutes after she was due at an important luncheon party given in her honor.”

— Agatha Christie

159. “I mean that if you are not absolutely sure of a thing, it is so difficult to commit yourself to a definite course of action.”

— Agatha Christie

160. “And suddenly one of those moments of intense happiness came to her – a sense of the loveliness of the world – of her own intense enjoyment of that world.”

— Agatha Christie

161. “The little grey cells, my friend, the little grey cells! They told me.”

— Agatha Christie

162. “Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so.” “Why?” “Because the train gets to its journey’s end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle.” “ ‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’ ” Lenox laughed. “That is not going to be true for me.” “Yes – yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it.”

— Agatha Christie

163. “Oh yes,” said Miss Marple fervently. “I always believe the worst. What is so sad is that one is usually justified in doing so.”

— Agatha Christie

164. “You don’t stop being in love with anyone because you get old. People like Derek and Deborah think you do. They can’t imagine anyone who isn’t young being in love.”

— Agatha Christie

165. “Yes, yes-you will give him the earth-because you love him. Love him too much for safety or for happiness. But you cannot give to people what they are incapable of receiving.”

— Agatha Christie

166. “The hearse is at the door, sir.”

— Agatha Christie

167. “Be sure thy sin will find thee out.”

— Agatha Christie

168. “Watch and pray,” he said. “Watch and pray. The day of judgment is at hand.”

— Agatha Christie

169. “As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.”

— Agatha Christie

170. “But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.”

— Agatha Christie

171. “There is no question of defence. I have always acted in accordance with the dictates of my conscience. I have nothing with which to reproach myself.”

— Agatha Christie

172. “Any coincidencce is worth noticing. You can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence.”

— Agatha Christie

173. “But when a man is really in love he can’t help looking like a sheep. Now whenever that young man looked he looked like a sheep I take back all is this morning. It is genuine.”

— Agatha Christie

174. “One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.”

— Agatha Christie

175. “My dear lady, in my experience of ill-doing, Providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals – and the process is often fraught with difficulties. There are no short cuts.”

— Agatha Christie

176. “Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush!”

— Agatha Christie

177. “It’s like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance.”

— Agatha Christie

178. “One does what one can, not what one cannot.”

— Agatha Christie

179. “I know there’s a proverb which that says ‘To err is human,’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.”

— Agatha Christie

180. “Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt in my own mind that we have been invited here by a madman-probably a dangerous homicidal lunatic.”

— Agatha Christie

181. “Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time thewish to kill-though not the will to kill.”

— Agatha Christie

182. “I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then – I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn’t, luckily, have to bother about that.”

— Agatha Christie

183. “You seem to know a hell of a lot about everything, you little foreign cock duck.”

— Agatha Christie

184. “No, Captain Lombard, the matter rests there. It is understood by my client that your reputation is that of a good man in a tight place. I am empowered to hand you one hundred guineas in return for which you will travel to Sticklehaven, Devon. The nearest station is Oakbridge, you will be met there and motored to Sticklehaven where a motor launch will convey you to Soldier Island. There you will hold yourself at the disposal of my client.” Lombard.”

— Agatha Christie

185. “If you will forgive me for being personal – I do not like your face, M. Ratchett,’ Poirot said.”

— Agatha Christie

186. “Self-preservation’s a man’s first duty. And natives don’t mind dying, you know. They don’t feel about it as Europeans do.”

— Agatha Christie

187. “When a man is really in love he can’t help looking like a sheep.”

— Agatha Christie

188. “That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”

— Agatha Christie

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

189. “The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr Kipling tells us, is: ‘Go and find out.’ If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. One might omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home.”

— Agatha Christie

190. “Your not reliable. You wouldn’t be at all a comfortable sort of person to live with.”

— Agatha Christie

191. “A woman who doesn’t lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.”

— Agatha Christie

192. “How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.”

— Agatha Christie

193. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what the fairies will send you –.”

— Agatha Christie

194. “You regard it as impossible that a sinner should be struck down by the wrath of God! I do not!”

— Agatha Christie

195. “There are more important things than finding the murderer. And justice is a fine word, but it is sometimes difficult to say exactly what one means by it. In my opinion, the important thing is to clear the innocent. – Hercule Poirot.”

— Agatha Christie

196. “Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defence?”

— Agatha Christie

197. “It was a fantastic moment. In it, Anthony Marston seemed to be something more than mortal. Afterwards more than one of those present remembered that moment.”

— Agatha Christie

198. “Expect me when you see me.”

— Agatha Christie

199. “You’ll be glad too, when the end comes.”

— Agatha Christie

200. “There was something magical about an island – the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world – an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.”

— Agatha Christie