Quotes About Perception

I know that in books it is always the most unlikely person. But I never find that rule applies in real life. There it is so often the obvious that is true.

Some of the greatest criminals I have known had the faces of angels.

All three wore the air of superiority assumed by people who are already in a place when studying new arrivals.

Nobody over fifty has got any sense.

Accuracy is more a male quality than a female one. - Jane Marple

Time, thought Bobby suddenly, was a very frightening thing.

Don't you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child? Miss Bulstrode's thoughts.

From all I have heard, geniuses are people to be heartily disliked.

as long as Mary can't cook and has those awful manners—well, we're safe, nobody else would have her." I perceived that my wife's methods of housekeeping were not so entirely haphazard as I had imagined. A certain amount of reasoning underlay them. Whether it was worthwhile having a maid at the price of her not being able to cook, and having a habit of throwing dishes and remarks at one with the same disconcerting abruptness, was a debatable matter.

You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence.

It is a great advantage to be intelligent and not to look it.

The truth is, that one doesn't really know anything about anybody. Not even the people who are nearest to you...' 'Isn't that going a little too far--exaggerating too much?' 'I don't think it is. When you think of people, it is in the image you have made of them for yourself.

A ridiculous-looking little man. The sort of little man one could never take seriously.

because I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you. I've often done it over contracts. And it's also a good thing to seem stupider than you are.

With a shock Iris realized suddenly that it was the first time in her life she had ever thought about Rosemary. Thought about her, that is, objectively, as a person. She had always accepted Rosemary without thinking about her. You didn't think about your mother or your father or your sister or your aunt. They just existed, unquestioned, in those relationships. You didn't think about them as people. You didn't ask yourself, even, what they were like.

You weren't quite accurate just now." "I? Not accurate?" Poirot sounded affronted.

After all, perhaps dirt isn't really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe.

Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy.

We're all mad, dear lady," he said as he ushered her in through the door. "That's the secret of existence. We're all a little mad.

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

He, of course, is a liar, but that doesn't really matter because, if you know liars are liars, it comes to the same thing.

There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true.

I must say that ever since I have been unable to stop myself applying this criterion to any male stranger. Good-looking, perhaps–but are his legs common?

Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details ... and they call the result intuition.