Sparkling Cyanide Quotes

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes-they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.... The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves that they don't give a damn.

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

Six people were thinking of Rosemary Barton who had died nearly a year ago...

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.

Oh, yes, sir.” Betty’s eyes sparkled with the pleasure of public disaster. “Wasn’t it dreadful?

Iris was too languid and too used to Mrs. Drake’s discursive style to inquire why the mention of Dr. Gaskell should have reminded her aunt of the local grocer, though had she done so, she would have received the immediate response: “Because the grocer’s name is Cranford, my dear.” Aunt Lucilla’s reasoning was always crystal clear to herself.

Most successes are unhappy. That’s why they are successes—they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.

I'd like to give these detective story writers a course of routine work. They'd soon learn how most things are untraceable and nobody ever notices anything anywhere!

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.

فقد أراد أن يضع حدا لعلاقتهما .. فلماذا ؟ هل أراد أن يفعل هذا لصالحها وفائدتها حقا كما ذكر لها ! ولكن .. أليس هذا مايقوله كل رجل حين يريد أن يقطع علاقته بالمرأة التي تحبه ؟

Colonel Race was not good at small talk and might indeed have posed as the model of a strong silent man so beloved by an earlier generation of novelists.

Race nodded. He had only met George’s wife once. He had thought her a singularly lovely nitwit—but certainly not a melancholic type.

these twitterers can tell one a lot if one just lets them—twitter!

The contrast between that and the gay lovely Rosemary of the day before . . . Well, perhaps not exactly gay.

You didn’t think about your mother or your father or your sister or your aunt. They just existed, unquestioned, in those relationships.

Oh, quite so. Count them both in as possibles. She for jealousy. He for his career. Divorce would have dished that. Not that divorce means as much as it used to, but in his case it would have meant the antagonism of the Kidderminster clan.

Horrible house! Iris shivered. She hated it. A gracious well-built house, harmoniously furnished and decorated (Ruth Lessing was never at fault!). And curiously, frighteningly vacant. They didn’t live there. They occupied it. As soldiers, in a war, occupied some lookout post.

She was wearing a dress of some soft dark red material, and sitting as she was with the light from the long narrow window behind her, she reminded Kemp of a stained glass figure he had once seen in a cathedral abroad. The long oval of her face and the slight angularity of her shoulders helped the illusion. Saint Somebody or other, they had told him—but Lady Alexandra Farraday was no saint—not by a long way. And yet some of these old saints had been funny people from his point of view, not kindly ordinary decent Christian folk, but intolerant, fanatical, cruel to themselves and others.

He had known George Barton ever since the latter’s boyhood. Barton’s uncle had been a country neighbour of the Races. There was a difference of over twenty years between the two men. Race was over sixty, a tall, erect, military figure, with sunburnt face, closely cropped iron-grey hair, and shrewd dark eyes.

So long as you didn’t expect her to talk. He thanked his stars he wasn’t married to her. Once you got used to all that perfection of face and form where would you be? She couldn’t even listen intelligently. The sort of girl who would expect you to tell her every morning at the breakfast table that you loved her passionately!

Five minutes later, a young man walking rapidly in the opposite direction pulled up short and stopped in front of Sandra. He exclaimed blithely: “I say, what luck! I wondered if I’d ever see you again.” His tone was so delighted that she blushed just a little. He stooped to the dog. “What a jolly little fellow. What’s his name?” “MacTavish.” “Oh, very Scotch.

What was the point of all the odd questions he was continually shooting at her, Iris? Wasn’t there something very queer about George lately? The odd fuddled look he had in the evenings! Lucilla attributed it to a glass or so too much of port. Lucilla would! No, there was something queer about George lately. He seemed to be labouring under a mixture of excitement interlarded with great spaces of complete apathy when he sunk in a coma.

He was going to succeed. As a first test of will, he determined to master his stammer. He practised speaking slowly, with a slight hesitation between every word. And in time his efforts were crowned with success. He no longer stammered. In school he applied himself to his lessons. He intended to have education. Education got you somewhere. Soon his teachers became interested, encouraged him. He won a scholarship. His parents were approached by the educational authorities—the boy had promise.

From the day of their marriage she had realized that he did not love her in the same way as she loved him. But she thought it possible that he was actually incapable of such a love. That power of loving was her own unhappy heritage. To care with a desperation, an intensity that was, she knew, unusual among women! She would have died for him willingly; she was ready to lie for him, scheme for him, suffer for him! Instead she accepted with pride and reserve the place he wanted her to fill. He wanted her cooperation, her sympathy, her active and intellectual help. He wanted of her, not her heart, but her brains, and those material advantages which birth had given her.

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.

Miss Shannon was, as Chief Inspector Kemp had stated, a blonde lovely. The bleached hair, carefully arranged, swept back from a soft vacant baby-like countenance. Miss Shannon might be as Inspector Kemp had affirmed, dumb—but she was eminently easy to look at, and a certain shrewdness in the large baby-blue eyes indicated that her dumbness only extended in intellectual directions and that where horse sense and a knowledge of finance were indicated, Christine Shannon was right on the spot.

Nevertheless, once the excitement of actually being in the House had subsided, he experienced swift disillusionment. The hardly fought election had put him in the limelight, now he was down in the rut, a mere insignificant unit of the rank and file, subservient to the party whips, and kept in his place. It was not easy here to rise out of obscurity.

Do you remember when you said it would be lovely if we died together? Fell asleep forever in each other’s arms? Do you remember when you said we’d take a caravan and go off into the desert? Just the stars and the camels—and how we’d forget everything in the world?” What damned silly things one said when one was in love! They hadn’t seemed fatuous at the time, but to have them hashed up in cold blood! Why couldn’t women let things decently alone? A man didn’t want to be continually reminded what an ass he’d made of himself.

Look here, Iris, you're in a tight place. But apart from anything else, there's such a thing as TRUTH. You can't play safe and take care of your own skin when it's a question of justice.

De meeste mensen die successen boeken, zijn ongelukkig. Dáárom boeken ze successen. Ze moeten zichzelf ten aanzien van zichzelf telkens weer geruststellen door iets te presteren wat de wereld opvalt.

He wanted her cooperation, her sympathy, her active and intellectual help. He wanted her, not her heart, but her brains, and those material advantages which birth had given her. - Alexandra Farraday

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.

Cut the cackle and come to the horses, my pet.

Girls were the same as they always had been—if they could get a man to keep them in comfort, they much preferred it.

Um sonho. Um sonho apaixonante e sensual. E, depois do sonho, o despertar. Pareceu acontecer de modo bastante repentino. Como sair de um túnel direto para a luz.

O que posso fazer para afastar a lembrança dos meus olhos?

Você sabe que as pessoas sempre têm uma razão boa e nobre para mascarar suas ações mais cruéis? Elas "têm que ser honestas" quando querem ser indelicadas, e são tão hipócritas com elas mesmas que passam a vida convencidas de que toda e qualquer ação má e bestial foi tomada com o espírito de desprendimento! Tente se dar conta de que o oposto dessas pessoas pode existir também. Pessoas que são tão cínicas, tão desconfiadas de si mesmas e da vida que acreditam apenas em seus motivos ruins.