Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories

there is nothing more amazing than the extraordinary sanity of the insane! Unless it is the extraordinary eccentricity of the sane!

Wherever there is human nature, there is drama.

Life is only one of the Great Illusions.

It’s not a man’s working hours that are important – it’s his leisure hours.

What a newspaper prints is news – but not always truth!

One must seek the truth within – not without.

What was this passion that attacked women for knitting under the most unpropitious conditions? A woman did not look her best knitting; the absorption, the glassy eyes, the restless, busy fingers! One needed the agility of a wild cat, and the will-power of a Napoleon to manage to knit in a crowded tube, but women managed it! If they succeeded in obtaining a seat, out came a miserable little strip of shrimp pink and click, click went the pins!

There are many things not called poison which can kill a man,

manner. He was very apologetic. So early

Never to despise the trivial – the undignified.

When you look your most innocent is when you are up to something.’ Revolving

They fear me, Hastings; the criminals of your England they fear me! When the cat is there, the little mice, they come no more to the cheese!” “I don’t suppose the greater part of them even know of your existence,” I said, laughing. Poirot looked at me reproachfully. He always imagines that the whole world is thinking and talking of Hercule Poirot. He had certainly made a name for himself in London, but I could hardly believe that his existence struck terror into the criminal world.

the more we learn, the less and less motive we find for suicide? But for murder, we begin to have a surprising collection of motives!

One can’t argue with a point of view.

there is no such thing as Death, really, you know, only Change.

that every hen lays an egg of a different size! What symmetry can there be on the breakfast table? At least they should sort them in dozens at the shop!

whatever that he left by the 6.15. That gets up to London about 10.30. He went straight to

Not a look, not a gesture of Valerie Saintclair’s but expressed drama. She seemed to exhale an atmosphere of romance. A scarlet flannel dressing gown covered her feet—a homely garment in all conscience; but the charm of her personality invested it with an exotic flavour, and it seemed an Eastern robe of glowing colour.

– it is the future that causes one inquietude.

A statesman in these days has a difficult task. He has to pursue the policy he deems advantageous to his country, but he has at the same time to recognize the force of popular feeling. Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddleheaded, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that.” “How

How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politician’s life. He has to bow to the country’s feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.” “That

Family strength is a marvellous thing.