Margery Allingham Quotes

Waiting is one of the great arts.

I am one of those people who are blessed ... with a nature which has to interfere. If I see a thing that needs doing I do it.

The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.

When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into a passion that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the most violent amongst us.

However carefully a judge is protected by the experience and the logic of the law, there must be times -not many, I know, or we should have no judges- when the same frightful question must be answered. Not faced, you see, but answered. Every now and again he must have to say to himself, in effect, "Everyone agrees that this colour is black, and my reason tells me it is so, but on my soul, do I know?

Why it is that a garment which is honestly attractive in, say, 1910 should be honestly ridiculous a few years later and honestly charming again a few years later still is one of those things which are not satisfactorily to be explained and are therefore jolly and exciting and an addition to the perennial interest of life.

There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder.

There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.