Agatha Christie Citations
Agatha Christie: Citations en anglais
“Children and one’s social inferiors never know when to say good-bye. One has to say it for them.”
The Burden (1956)
“It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women.”
The Labours of Hercules (1967)
“One has occasionally to pocket one’s pride and readjust one’s ideas.”
Death in the Clouds (1935)
“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
Source: Peril at End House
Christie denied having made this remark, which had been attributed to her by her second husband Sir Max Mallowan in a news report (9 March 1954); according to Nigel Dennis, "Genteel Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie Puts Her Zest for Life Into Murder", Life, Volume 40, N° 20, 14 May 1956 http://books.google.com/books?id=p0wEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA102, she was quoting "a witty wife"; Quote Investigator reports on "An Archaeologist Is the Best Husband a Woman Can Have" as of uncertain origin. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/12/husband/
Disputed
Variante: An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles
“In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.”
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
Contexte: I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
Contexte: I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.
Dr Reilly
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Contexte: Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop. At least that's the way it is with me when I have to make a speech. Someone's got to catch hold of my coat-tails and pull me down by main force.
Akhenaten, as portrayed in Akhnaton (1937); Christie later revised the play slightly in 1972, and it was published in 1973.
Contexte: I have given them life instead of death, freedom instead of the cords of superstition, beauty and truth instead of corruption and exploitation. The old bad days are over for them, the Light of the Aton has risen, and they can dwell in peace and harmony freed from the shadow of fear and oppression.
“Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them.”
The Labours of Hercules (1967)
Contexte: Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
“Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.”
Source: The Secret Adversary
Source: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”
Hercule Poirot
Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Contexte: Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.
Part III: Growing Up, §II
Source: An Autobiography (1977)
“To every problem, there is a most simple solution.”
Source: The Clocks
“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory — let the theory go.”
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Miss Viner
Source: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
Contexte: I was wrong about that young man of yours. A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep. Now, whenever that young man looked at you he looked like a sheep. I take back all I said this morning. It is genuine.
“I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.”
Hercule Poirot
Source: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
“Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.”
Hercule Poirot
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Source: The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
