Quotes About Perception

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

One of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again.

Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.

Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts. -"The Blood-Stained Pavement

Poirot said placidly, "One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – " he tapped his egg-shaped head – "this, that functions!

And so could you know it if you would only use the brains the good God has given you. Sometimes I really am tempted to believe that by inadvertence, He passed you by.

Do you not realize, Hastings, that each and everyone of us is a complete mystery with layers. We each try to judge each other, but nine times out of ten, we are wrong.

One of the oddest things in life I think is the things one remembers.

fiction is founded on truth... unless things did happen, people couldn't think of them.

How little you might know of a person after living in the same house with them!

That's the curious part about speaking the truth. No one does believe it.

the truth is never horrible, only interesting.

The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.

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

Do you believe in the value of truth, my dear, or don't you?" "Of course I believe in the truth," said Rhoda, staring. "Yes, you say that, but perhaps you haven't thought about it. The truth hurts sometimes – and destroys one's illusions." "I'd rather have it all the same." said Rhoda. "So would I. But I don't know that we're wise.

The spoken word and the written - there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the meaning.

Was bad language used?" asked Colonel Melchett. "It depends on what you call bad language." "Could you understand it?" I asked. "Of course I could understand it." "Then it couldn't have been bad language," I said. Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me suspiciously. "A refined lady," I explained, "is naturally unacquainted with bad language.

One's own troubles sharpen one's eyes sometimes.

What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face.

No one human being knows the full truth about another human being. Not even one's nearest and dearest.

It seems dreadful to say so, but there is something attractive to a girl in being told anyone is a bad man. She thinks at once that her love will reform him.

people are never like what you remember them. You make them, as the years go by, more and more the way you wish them to be, and as you think you remember them. If you want to remember them as agreeable and gay and handsome, you make them far more so than they actually were.

He dragged me back - just in time. A tree had crashed down on to the side walk, just missing us. Poirot stared at it, pale and upset. "It was a near thing that! But clumsy, all the same - for I had no suspicion - at least hardly any suspicion. Yes, but for my quick eyes, the eyes of a cat, Hercule Poirot might now be crushed out of existence - a terrible calamity for the world. And you, too, mon ami - though that would not be such a national catastrophe." "Thank you," I said coldly.

I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps--at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there.