Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot, #22)

by Agatha Christie

To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but all the same, Elinor, one would not be without that experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived….”

“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.”

“Not that Seddon gives me much confidence. He’s so confoundedly gloomy.” “It is a habit, that, of lawyers.”

“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!”