Margery Allingham

Waiting is one of the great arts.

— Margery Allingham

the old fellow seemed to spot deceit as if it reeked like a goat.

— Margery Allingham

One policeman may be a friend, but two are the Law.

— Margery Allingham

If one cannot command attention by one's admirable qualities one can at least be a nuisance

— Margery Allingham

Beware of anger. It is the most difficult to remove of all the hindrances. But it is the alcohol of the body,…

— Margery Allingham

When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into a passion, that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the…

— Margery Allingham

“THE main thing to remember in autobiography, I have always thought, is not to let any damned modesty creep in to spoil…

— Margery Allingham

When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing…

— Margery Allingham

It is always difficult to escape from youth; its hopefulness, its optimistic belief in the privileges of desire, its despair, and its…

— Margery Allingham

the relationship between the two men was something of a miracle in itself. It was a cordiality based, apparently, on complete non-comprehension…

— Margery Allingham

“No.' He spoke with a tenderness unexpected in him. 'No, lady, no. Put that clean out of your mind. That dear chap…

— Margery Allingham

A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the…

— Margery Allingham

People don't alter. They may with enormous difficulty modify themselves, but they never really change.

— Margery Allingham

Once sex rears its ugly 'ead it's time to steer clear.

— Margery Allingham

The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.

— Margery Allingham

It's pitch, sex is. Once you touch it, it clings to you.

— Margery Allingham

“Albert Campion: 'I’m serious!' Lugg: 'That’s unhealthy in itself.”

— Margery Allingham

Outrage, combining as it does shock, anger, reproach, and helplessness, is perhaps the most unmanageable, the most demoralizing of all the emotions.

— Margery Allingham

“Meanwhile Crumb Street, never a place of beauty, that afternoon was at its worst. The fog slopped over its low houses like…

— Margery Allingham

When one kicks over a tea table and smashes everything but the sugar bowl, one may as well pick that up and…

— Margery Allingham

Love so seldom means happiness.

— Margery Allingham

There are only two kinds of men who become dentists. The ones who love it and ones who get miserable. Think round…

— Margery Allingham

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

— Margery Allingham

Self-satisfaction is the state of mind of those who have the happy conviction that they are not as other men.

— Margery Allingham

It's easy enough to make the truth look silly. A man never seems more foolish-like than he does when he's speaking his…

— Margery Allingham