All Quotes

"“There’s no reason why women shouldn’t behave like rational beings,” said Simon stolidly. Poirot said dryly: “Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!”"

"But to succeed in life every detail should be arranged well beforehand."

"It was a very British and utterly unconvincing performance."

"“You do well. Method and order, they are everything,” replied Poirot."

"I'm used to that. It often seems to me that's all detective work is — wiping out your false starts and beginning again."

"“That’s all very well — they’re not educated, poor creatures.” “No, and a good thing too. Education has devitalised the white races. Look at America — goes in for an orgy of culture. Simply disgusting.”"

"Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition--and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do--clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth--the naked shining truth."

"“It’s so dreadfully easy — killing people… And you begin to feel that it doesn’t matter… That it’s only you that matters! It’s dangerous — that.”"

"And Mr. Burnaby said acutely: "Well, it doesn't seem to have done her much good, poor lass." But after a while they stopped talking about her and discussed instead who was going to win the Grand National. For, as Mr. Ferguson was saying at that minute in Luxor, it is not the past that matters but the future."

"Pilar sat squeezed up against the window and thought how very odd the English smelt."

"“Pilar — remember — nothing is so boring as devotion.”"

"“Yes, Mr. Lee.” Superintendent Sugden did not wast time on explanations. “What’s all this?”"

"The character of the victim has always something to do with his or her murder."

"He is like a cat. And all cats are thieves."

"Is it coding — or code breaking? Is it like Deborah's job? Do be careful, Tommy, people go queer doing that and can't sleep and walk about all night groaning and repeating 978345286 or something like that and finally have nervous breakdowns and go into homes."

"‘I have often noticed that being a devoted wife saps the intellect,’ murmured Tommy."

"‘Truth of it is,’ said Commander Haydock, steering rather erratically round a one-way island and narrowly missing collision with a large van, ‘when the beggars are right, one remembers it, and when they’re wrong you forget it.’"

"Flattery, in Tuppence's opinion, should always be laid on with a trowel where a man is concerned."

"‘You’re frightfully BBC in your language this afternoon, Albert,’ said Tuppance, with some exasperation. Albert looked slightly taken aback and reverted to a more natural form of speech. ‘I was listening to a very interesting talk on pond life last night,’ he explained."

"Like most Englishmen, he felt something strongly, and proceeded to muddle around until he had, somehow or other, cleared up the mess."

"I could think of nothing more insufferable than members of one's own gang dropping in full of sympathy and their own affairs."

"Freckles are so earnest and Scottish."

"Quite absurd, because Caleb has absolutely no taste for fornication. He never has had. So lucky, being a clergyman."

"Work, Mr. Burton. There's nothing like work, for men and women. The one unforgivable sin is idleness."

"“Jerry had an expensive public school education, so he doesn’t recognize Latin when he hears it,” said Joanna"

"To commit a successful murder must be very much like bringing off a conjuring trick."

"“It makes her rather alarming,” I said. “Sincerity has that effect,” said Miss Marple."

"Miss Marple twinkled at me."

"Last time I had my hands on you, you felt like a bird - struggling to escape. You'll never escape now..."

"Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live."

"You know that in all tombs there is always a false door?" Renisenb stared. "Yes, of course." "Well, people are like that too. They create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is a bare rock … And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself."

"It is the kind of thing that happens to you when you are stupid," said Esa. "Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them."

"Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen."

"Sylvia the fair, in the bloom of Fifteen Felt an innocent warmth, as she lay on the green; She had heard of a pleasure, and something she guest By the towzing and tumbling and touching her Breast: She saw the men eager, but was at a loss, What they meant by their sighing and kissing so close; By their praying and whining, And clasping and twining, And panting and wishing, And sighing and kissing, And sighing and kissing so close."

"’Tis unkind to your Love, and unfaithfully done, To leave me behind you, and die all alone. [...] Then often they died; but the more they did so, The Nymph died more quick, and the Shepherd more slow."

"Sex and drugs and rock and roll Is all my brain and body need. Sex and drugs and rock and roll Is very good indeed."

"Can a woman not keep her lover without she study to always please him with pleasure? Pew! then let her give up the game. Or shall my lover think with pleasing of me to win me indeed? Faugh! he payeth me then; doth he think I am for hire?"

"Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye Is underlined for emphasis; Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss."

"No one warns young people to follow Adam's example. He waited till God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this 'being asleep' in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all. Instead we are set as bloodhounds after a partner, considering everyone we see until our minds are so concerned with the sex problem that we can talk of nothing else when bull-session time comes around. It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women — but he can think of them as he ought — as sisters, not as sparring partners!"

"Not being able to ban sexuality altogether, Catholicism has tried to reduce it to a mere biological fact, allowing its use in marriage only for procreation. Unlike certain ancient traditions, Catholicism has recognized no higher value, not even a potential one, in the sexual experience taken in itself. There is lacking any basis for its transformation in the interests of a more intense life, to integrate and elevate the inner tension of two beings of different sexes, whereas it is in exactly these terms that one should conceive of a concrete "sacralization" of the union and the effect of a higher influence involved in the rite."

"The sex life of the working class is nasty, brutish and short. Every survey of behaviour, whether it's sexual offences or marital behaviour or premarital behaviour shows that. I had a dear friend who used to say 'tell me how a man makes love and I'll tell you how he votes', and that is absolutely justified in terms of what we know about class attitude and conduct in sexual matters."

"What happens is that, as with drugs, one needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can't double the dose."

"Always fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched. [...] Just as some poetry is of the eye (form, colour) and some of the ear, so Keats is of the palate. Not only has he constant reference to its pleasures, but the general sensation after reading him is one of tasting. 'What's the harm?' Well, taste for some reason or the other can't carry one far into the world of beauty—that reason being perhaps that though you don't want comradership there you do want the possibility of comradership, and A cannot swallow B's mouthful by any possibility:....and this exclusiveness (to maunder on) also attaches to the physical side of sex though not the least to the spiritual."

"Sex is like the pursuit of wild mushrooms: Both are fascinating hobbies, both can prove most addictive, and both for the most part yield tasty results. And yet, for the novice, there exists always the chance of making that one fatal mistake."

"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."

"Life to him was identified with the intimate charm of the feminine form in its greatest variety: and so he spent his days in quest of the red light."

"When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away?The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom—is to die."

"When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned — avoid having sex with the authorities."

"Amœbas at the start Were not complex; They tore themselves apart And started Sex. [...] ’Tis Sex that rules the lives Of clods and kings; It gives us books and wives And other things—Ambition, love, and strife And all the ills And ecstasies of life— And Freuds and Brills."

"Why do they call them love-spells, anyway?" he added bitterly. "It isn't love, you know." "Maybe because some people can't tell the difference. ... Or if they suspect there's a difference, they don't want to know."