Quotes About Observation

Child's evidence is always the best evidence there is. I'd rely on it every time. No good in court, of course. Children can't stand being asked direct questions. They mumble or else look idiotic and say they don't know. They're at their best when they're showing off.

Les femmes," generalized Poirot. "They are marvellous! They invent haphazard—and by miracle they are right. Not that it is that, really. 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. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. I know these things.

She looked, I decided this morning, much more like a horse than a human being. In fact she would have been a very nice horse with a little grooming.

Paeonies," said Miss Marple as she rose from table, "are most unaccountable. Either they do—or they don't do. But if they do establish themselves, they are with you for life, so to speak, and really most beautiful varieties nowadays.

And for five long hours the little man sat motionless, blinking his eyelids like a cat, his green eyes flickering and becoming steadily greener and greener.

Sir Henry Clithering, ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, sat silent, twisting his moustache—or rather stroking it—and half smiling, as though at some inward thought that amused him. "Sir Henry," said Mrs. Bantry at last. "If you don't say something I shall scream. Are there a lot of crimes that go unpunished, or are there not?

Ah, but that is always so," said Poirot quietly. "A mirror shows the truth, but everyone stands in a different place for looking into the mirror.

A good way behind came Hercule Poirot. He trod softly like a cat.

I couldn't have a good look at her because whenever I glanced in her direction I always found her staring at me with a kind of hungry stare that was a bit disconcerting to say the least of it.

She had on a very vivid pullover and her nails matched it in colour. She had a thin bird-like eager face with big eyes and rather a tight, suspicious mouth.

Sarah said frowning: "I don't understand doctor Gerard. He seems to think - " "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," quoted Poirot. "You see, I know your Shakespeare.

Come now, monsieur, you're not going to run down the value of details as clues?

Lytton Gore saw nothing, noticed nothing

I wonder," I said. "I think each one of us in his secret heart fancies himself as Sherlock Holmes.

Smell goes up, not down. You'd notice a decaying body in the cellar much sooner than in the attic. And, anyway, for a long time people would think it was a dead rat.

It's maddening really," said Patricia. "Probably the only chance in my life that I shall ever have of being right on the spot when a murder was done—it is a murder, isn't it? The papers were very cautious and vague, but I said to Gerry on the telephone that it must be murder. Think of it, a murder done right close by me and I wasn't even looking!" The regret in her voice was unmistakable.

Agatha Christie

Nobody appeared to Miss Marple likely to be a murdered except possibly Mr.Caspar and that was probably foreign prejudice. Coincidence? thought Miss Marple meditatively, turning the word over in her mouth rather as a child might do to a certain lollipop to decide its flavour. Any coincidence, said Miss Marple to herself, is always worth noticing. You can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence.

Guy Carpenter frowned and came into the drawing room through the window. He had a long face like a horse, he was pale and looked rather supercilious. His manner was pompous. Hercule Poirot found him unattractive.

What have I always told you? Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory — let the theory go.

Poirot had the capacity to attract confidences. It was as though when people were talking to him they hardly realised who it was they were talking to.

Instinct is a marvellous thing," mused Poirot. "It can neither be explained nor ignored.

Les femmes," generalized Poirot. "They are marvelous! They invent haphazard—and by miracle they are right. Not that it is that, really. 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. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. I know these things.

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. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. I know these things.