Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot, #22)

by Agatha Christie

Love surely should be a pleasurable emotion—not something that hurt you by its intensity…

“The point is that one’s got an instinct to live. One doesn’t live because one’s reason assents to living. People who, as we say, ‘would be better

dead,’ don’t want to die! People who apparently have got everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they haven’t got the energy to fight.”

“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.” “And underneath?” “Underneath is the primitive human man or woman.”

“Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, ‘I will feel so much and no more.’ Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable!”

For lies, Mademoiselle, tell a listener just as much as truth can. Sometimes they tell more.

One must understand with the cells of one’s brain before one uses one’s eyes.”

is not for me to run here and there, doing amateurishly the things that for a small sum someone else can do with professional skill.

“Can you not accept facts? She loved Roderick Welman. What of it? With you, she can be happy….”