Unnatural Death Quotes
"The death was certainly sudden, unexpected, and to me mysterious."
"It doesn’t do for people, especially doctors, to go about ‘thinking’ things."
"People don’t fancy calling in a man who’s liable to bring out accusations of murder on the smallest provocation."
"A doctor—you can’t have any idea how dependent he is on the fancies and prejudices of his patients."
"Death, when it does come, will be a release from suffering."
"There are two million more females than males in England and Wales! And this is an awe-inspiring circumstance."
"One can’t really blame people if it’s just that they need an outlet."
"You will be happy to hear, after my two previous bad shots, that I have found the right place at last."
"Human pride and vanity make a most shocking exhibition when they lead us to cast suspicion on innocent people."
"It's not a natural life for a young woman, all alone like that, and so I told her."
"It is a well-established psychological fact that criminals cannot let well alone."
"People can be very spiteful if they think they've been slighted."
"Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies."
"Not that bodies need necessarily interfere with one's enjoyment of one's food. À la guerre comme à la guerre. But for the moment there isn’t a war on."
"May we ne’er lack a friend or a bottle to give him."
"The stalwart oak—for so many centuries Britain’s bulwark against the invader!"
"Only rich people or people who understand eating as a fine art."
"Who is Sylvia? What is she? That Shakespeare always has the right word, doesn’t he?"
"Murder's so easy, Charles, so damned easy—even without special training."
"Successful murderers don't write to the papers about it."
"Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues."
"Each of us holds the life of one other person between his hands—but only one."
"Well, there’s only one thing that could prevent that happening, and that’s—oh, lord! old son. Do you know what it works out at?—The missing heir!"
"Miss Timmins said that it "regularly turned her stomach"—that was her phrase, and I trust you will excuse it—I understand that these parts of the body are frequently referred to in polite (!) society nowadays."
"After all, even blacks are God’s creatures and we might all be black ourselves if He had not in His infinite kindness seen fit to favour us with white skins!!"
"It does seem strange, does it not, but I believe many of these native preachers are called to do splendid work among their own people, and no doubt a minister is entitled to have a visiting-card, even when black!!!"
"The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it."
"Our ancestors are very good kind of folks, but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with."
"I know what an Act to make things simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don’t understand it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a lawsuit to disentangle it."
"To the lay mind, doubtless, the word ‘issue’ appears a simple one. But in law, the word may bear one of two, or indeed several, interpretations."
"Ethically, there may be much to be said for your point of view. Legally, I am afraid, murder is murder, however frail the victim or convenient the result."
"I think it’s because Acts are drawn up by lawyers, to make work for themselves."
"The law has nothing to do with good intentions."
"Many words have no legal meaning. Others have a legal meaning very unlike their ordinary meaning."
"Prior to 1837, the word ‘issue’ meant nothing. A grant ‘to A. and his issue’ merely gave A. a life estate."
"The longer I live, my dear, the more certain I become that jealousy is the most fatal of feelings."
"A great friendship does make demands. It’s got to be just everything to one."
"Love is always good, when it’s the right kind."
"I make an exception, of course, in favour of the police officer you mention in connection with the matter."
"I was aware that Miss Dawson was extremely averse from making a will, owing to that superstitious dread of decease which we meet with so frequently in our profession."
"She resented any such suggestion—there was a conspiracy, she declared, to frighten her into dying under the operation."
"Naturally, the fool of a doctor had insisted that she was not to be told what her disease was—they always do."
"However, I thought it my duty to make her understand the question and to do my utmost to get a will signed."
"The most that I thought it proper to say was that if at any time Miss Dawson should express a wish to see me, I should like to be sent for without delay."
"That it should have occurred so suddenly and under circumstances somewhat mysterious, is certainly interesting."
"She was not a particularly sensible woman, and in the end, I was not at all sure that I had made her comprehend the situation."
"Trust is the foundation of our profession, yet here I was, cast out over a misunderstanding born from care and precaution."
"Where strangers are friendly and friends are casual. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets."
"But surely there must be something which kills without leaving a trace," pleaded Lord Peter.
"You don’t understand," said Sir James Lubbock. "Plenty of poisons leave no particular postmortem appearances."
"Isn’t there a poison with no symptoms and no test? Something that just makes you go off, Pouf! like that?"
"Who are we to take life and death into our hands?"
"God’s law and Caesar’s. Policemen, now—it’s no problem to them. But for the ordinary man—how hard to disentangle his own motives."
"Bring the offender to justice, but remember that if we all got justice, you and I wouldn’t escape either."
"What happened," said Parker, "as we think, is this. We think that for some reason Miss Whittaker had determined to get rid of this poor girl who was so devoted to her."
"If this was the work of a secret gang, why should they go out of their way to pick out the one damp, muddy spot in twenty miles of country to leave their footprints in?"
"You've proved your point," he said at length. "I consider that absolutely convincing."
"It struck even Sir Charles Pillington, who is none too bright," said Parker.
"And the amiable Mrs. Forrest appears to be another of the same kidney."
"Discipline, I must learn self-control," she murmured, retrieving the last lost sheep from under a hassock.
"If this is a sin I am going to do it, and may I be forgiven."