Top 500 Agatha Christie Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

154. “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

155. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

162. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

165. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

168. “Ulick Norman Owen – Una Nancy Owen – each time, that is to say, U. N. Owen. Or by a slight stretch of fancy, UNKNOWN!”

— Agatha Christie

169. “Yes,” said Miss Marple. “The children of Lucifer are often beautiful – And as we know, they flourish like the green bay tree.”

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

171. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

174. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

180. “It’s not a man’s working hours that are important – it’s his leisure hours. That’s the mistake we all make.”

— Agatha Christie

181. “I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.”

— Agatha Christie

182. “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

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

— Agatha Christie

184. “One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave – our own self. Get on good terms with that companion – learn to live with yourself.”

— Agatha Christie

185. “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

186. “When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.”

— Agatha Christie

187. “If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.”

— Agatha Christie

188. “Every man should have aunts. They illustrate the triumph of guess work over logic.”

— Agatha Christie

189. “From now on, it is our task to suspect each and everyone amongst us. Forewarned is forearmed. Take no risks and be alert to danger. That is all.”

— Agatha Christie

190. “Expect me when you see me.”

— Agatha Christie

191. “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

192. “There is a great deal of wickedness in village life. I hope you dear young people will never realize how very wicked the world is.”

— Agatha Christie

193. “I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps – at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, ’all there.”

— Agatha Christie

194. “I have learned to save myself useless emotion.”

— Agatha Christie

195. “Life is really like a ship–the interior of a ship, that is. It has watertight compartments. You emerge from one, seal and bolt the doors, and find yourself in another. My life from the day we left Southampton to the day we returned to England was one such compartment. Ever since that I have felt the same about travel. You step from one life into another. You are yourself, but a different self. The new self is untrammelled by all the hundreds of spiders’ webs and filaments.”

— Agatha Christie

196. “I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.”

— Agatha Christie

197. “I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.”

— Agatha Christie

198. “What was this passion that attacked women for knitting under the most unpropitious conditions? A woman did not look her best knitting; the absorption, the glassy eyes, the restless, busy fingers! One needed the agility of a wild cat, and the will-power of a Napoleon to manage to knit in a crowded tube, but women managed it! If they succeeded in obtaining a seat, out came a miserable little strip of shrimp pink and click, click went the pins!”

— Agatha Christie

199. “At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction – it fascinated rather than repelled.”

— Agatha Christie

200. “Fortunately words, ingeniously used, will serve to mask the ugliness of naked facts.”

— Agatha Christie