Mystery of Life: Book Quotes by Agatha Christie

Today, in the new issue of the Quotebook, I invite you to revise a collection of thoughts from books by the queen of the detective and mystery genre, Agatha Christie. Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was a world-renowned English author best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections. In particular, she is a creator of the amazingly deep and detailed literary characters of fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Let’s take a glance at the set of book quotes from her stories, filled with wisdom and humour and capturing many faces of life, love, and death.

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She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.

(Agatha Christie)

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
(Agatha Christie)

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It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.

(Agatha Christie)

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Very few of us are what we seem.

(Agatha Christie)

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The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

(Agatha Christie)

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An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.

(Agatha Christie)

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Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.

(Agatha Christie)

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If you place your head in a lion’s mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.

(Agatha Christie)

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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)

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One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late.

(Agatha Christie)

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It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.

(Agatha Christie)

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The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.

(Agatha Christie)

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One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.

(Agatha Christie)

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As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife! Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands. Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.

(Agatha Christie)

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It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.

(Agatha Christie)

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Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.

(Agatha Christie)

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But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.

(Agatha Christie)

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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.

(Agatha Christie)

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The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

(Agatha Christie)

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I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.

(Agatha Christie)

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“Everybody always knows something,” said Adam, “even if it’s something they don’t know they know.”

(Agatha Christie)

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Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.

(Agatha Christie)

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I’m sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. ‘The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life.’ That sort of thing. It’s not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren’t. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains.

(Agatha Christie)

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Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before.

(Agatha Christie)

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There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.

(Agatha Christie)

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Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

(Agatha Christie)

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People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something. I’ve known many an invalid who has suffered worse and been cut off from life much more . . . and they’ve managed to lead happy contented lives. It’s what’s in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy.

(Agatha Christie)

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Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, ‘I will feel so much and no more.’ Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable.

(Agatha Christie)

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Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition.

(Agatha Christie)

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Most successes are unhappy. That’s why they are successes-they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice…. The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves that they don’t give a damn.

(Agatha Christie)

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Our weapon is our knowledge. But remember, it may be a knowledge we may not know that we possess.

(Agatha Christie)

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There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn’t really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We’re so busy punishing ourselves.

(Agatha Christie)

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To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..

(Agatha Christie)

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Two people rarely see the same thing.

(Agatha Christie)

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Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them.

(Agatha Christie)

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Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.

(Agatha Christie)

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Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?

(Agatha Christie)

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Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide.

(Agatha Christie)

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Oh! money! All the troubles in the world can be put down to money—or the lack of it.

(Agatha Christie)

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It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violence for the reason that when their control does snap, it goes entirely.

(Agatha Christie)

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There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.

(Agatha Christie)

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Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.

(Agatha Christie)