Agatha Christie Best Quotes 💬

Agatha Christie was a fascinating writer who impressed her readers and fans with her intricate plots and twists. But the excellent plots are not the only reasons for loving Christie. Within her stories are dialogues and quotes that are worthy to be framed and remembered for ages to come. Let’s read some great quotes from the Queen of Crime.

Crime and Detection

If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it – often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect

Murder on the Orient Express

The famous Hercule Poirot refers to one of his methods of solving mysteries in this quote. He posits that people usually admit the truth involuntarily when confronted with it. Therefore, a detective only needs to be smart enough to make correct guesses, and the criminal is almost guaranteed to admit to it. This assertion of his is, however, challenged by suspects in some cases, leading to a more complicated solution.

Everyone is a potential murderer—in everyone there arises from time to time the wish to kill, though not the will to kill.

Curtain; Poirot’s Last Case

Here they posit that all humans have the potential to consider murder. However, it is not everyone that wishes to commit murder actually has the will to act on that wish. For some, that wish to kill is a transient feeling that may occur because of a provocation but not result in any action.

One’s own troubles sharpen one’s mind sometimes

Murder at the Vicarage

The idea in this quote is that when it comes to solving mysteries, a detective’s personal troubles enhance their ability to put things into perspective and understand the significance of clues much faster. This suggests that for some detectives, solving cases serves as an escape from their own worries, and so, the more troubled they are, the more invested they become in a case.

Women

Women are wonderful realists

In this quote, Agatha Christie talks about how realistic women are in their expectations of morality from their spouses. Christie notes that she can trust a woman to accept her husband’s dark past but cannot trust a man to do the same. She is of the view that a woman can accept that a man is a ”rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar and a general swine without batting an eyelash”. In Christie’s view, such character flaws do not impair a woman’s affection for the man she loves.

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

Murder in Mesopotamia

The author here is saying that lying is an inherent quality in women and that only women without an imaginative mind or tender feelings of sympathy are capable of avoiding lying. This supports the general belief that women often lie to spare people from feeling hurt by the truth.

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.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Christie thinks that what is believed to be the quick insight that makes women seemingly arrive at conclusions without evident rational thought is in actuality the outcome of a keen subconscious observation.

When will a woman lie? Sometimes for herself. Usually for the man she loves. Always for her children.

Christie believes that the reasons women lie are often selfless. According to Agatha Christie, a woman seldom lies for herself but lies often for the man she loves and is certain to always lie for her children if lying would be for their benefit.

Human Depravity

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

The Moving Finger

This quote talks about people’s penchant to shift responsibility for their evil actions to supernatural forces. Oftentimes, people claim they were influenced by the devil to do something evil or that their evil-doing is the will of God. Christie does not agree with that belief and believes that humans act of their own free will and that it is not God that punishes humans but fellow humans.

Each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes

Lord Edgware Dies

This is a fairly apt description of humans in general. Humans have conflicting impulses battling for supremacy within them.

The body-the cage- is everything of the most respectable but through the bars, the wild animal looks out.

Murder on the Orient Express

This quote is describing the body as some sort of prison for our wild primitive instincts. This cage and the appearance of respectability in the eyes of society make some people hold back from acting on these primal instincts, but still, these instincts are sometimes seen in the eyes peaking through in hunger and anticipation.

Love

A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

The Hound of Death

This quote from the novel ”A Hound of Death” is an attempt to describe the depth and intensity of a mother’s love and the great lengths a mother would go to for the sake of her child. It captures the relentless and obstinate nature of this love and how no sacrifice is too great, and no obstacle is strong enough to withstand a mother’s love.

But surely, for everything you love, you have to pay some price.

Here, Christie reiterates the fact that with love comes sacrifice. The expression of love often demands that something is given or some price is paid.

Love can be a very frightening thing. That is why most great love stories are tragedies.

Death on the Nile

Here is another quote that suggests that love makes people irrational and often ends in destruction. To buttress this point, Christie alludes to the many love stories that end in tragedy.

General Ideas

Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.

The Secret Adversary

This is a piece of sage advice for people to have ideas and information that they keep to themselves alone. It instructs one not to share everything they know, not even with the person they know best because, at the end of the day, one is only ever sure of one’s self.

The young people think the old people are fools but the old people know the young people are fools.

The Murder at the Vicarage

This quote is another that shows the never-ending battle between the older and the younger generations. Here, Christie’s stance is in favour of the old, stating that while the old people’s folly might be a probability, the young people’s foolishness is a certainty.

To win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

Like many other views about the evils of war, Christie lends her voice by saying that the devastation of war affects both winners and losers.

Imagination is a good servant and a bad master

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

This is a wise expression. It simply means that if you are in control of your imagination, you can create many wonderful things with it. But if you let your imagination take the reins, it may run wild or mess with your mind and your perception of reality.

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

This quote is saying that one should expect certain consequences when one places one’s self in certain compromising or dangerous situations and that one has no right to complain when these obvious consequences occur.

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