Best quotes from The Mysterious Affair at Styles

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.

An appreciative listener is always stimulating.

Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.

Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined---sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured---so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.

When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!

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

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.

Miss Howard: Like a good detective story myself. Lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last Chapter. Everyone dumbfounded. Real crime - you'd know at once.

My dear Poirot, it's not for me to dictate to you. You have a right to your own opinion, just as I have mine.

Mrs. Cavendish: I am charming to my friends one day, and forget all about them the next.

Hasting - There are times when it is one's duty to assert oneself.

Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.

So you think that the coco- mark well what I say, Hastings, the coco- contained strychnine?"
"Of course! That salt on the tray, what else could it have been?"
"It might have been salt." replied Poirot placidly.

Lawrence arrossì, imbarazzato, poi sorrise. Un uomo innamorato è sempre uno spettacolo penoso.

I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.

... one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.

If the fact will not fit the theory - let the theory go

You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.

I shall never forget my first sight of Mary Cavendish. Her tall, slender form, outlined against the bright light; the vivid sense of slumbering fire that seemed to find expression only in those wonderful tawny eyes of hers, remarkable eyes, different from any other woman's that I have ever known; the intense power of stillness she possessed, which nevertheless conveyed the impression of a wild untamed spirit in an exquisitely civilised body—all these things are burnt into my memory. I shall never forget them.

I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method. My system is based on his—though of course I have progressed rather further. He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever.

Let me tell you this, Hastings. She would never forgive me if I let Alfred Inglethorp, her husband, be arrested now—when a word from me could save him!

Oh, my friend, have I not said to you all along that I have no proofs. It is one thing to know that a man is guilty, it is quite another matter to prove him so. And, in this case, there is terribly little evidence. That is the whole trouble.