"Sometimes what you think is an end is only a beginning. And that wouldn't do at all."

"Why didn't they ask the Evans?"

"Mr. Satterthwaite looked cheered. Suddenly an idea struck him. His jaw fell. "My goodness," he cried, "I've only just realized it! That rascal, with his poisoned cocktail! Anyone might have drunk it! It might have been me!""There is an even more terrible possibility that you have not considered," said Poirot. "Eh?""It might have been me," said Hercule Poirot."

"We are the same people as we were at three six ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so perhaps at six or seven because we were not pretending so much then."

"Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more."

"I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself."

"I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has. Goes to sleep all winter and doesn't eat anything more than grass as far as I know, to live all the summer. Not an interesting life perhaps, but a very peaceful one."

"When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!"

"And they had no idea that they and many others were automatically pronounced deadly dull solely on that account. Only by the young of course, but then, they would have thought indulgently, young people knew nothing about life. Poor dears, they were always worrying about examinations, or their sex life, or buying some extraordinary clothes, or doing some extraordinary things to their hair to make them more noticeable."

"That's where all the trouble in life comes from. Thinking."

"You would hate people if you were like me. If you weren't wanted."

"Miss Howard: Like a good detective story myself. Lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last Chapter. Everyone dumbfounded. Real crime - you'd know at once."

"What I think is a different matter. Maybe I think some rather curious things-but until thinking's got you somewhere it's no use talking about it."

"Her sleep was enlivened by several dreams. One where Professor Wanstead's bushy eyebrows fell off because they were not his own eyebrows, but false ones. As she woke again, her first impression was that which often follows dreams, a belief that the dream in question had solved everything. 'Of course,' she thought, 'of course!' His eyebrows were false and that solved the whole thing. He was the criminal."

"I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language."

"Sitting here, literally amongst the dead, reckoning up gains and losses, casting accounts, I have come to see gains that cannot be reckoned in terms of wealth, and losses that are more damaging than loss of a crop... I look at the River and I see the lifeblood of Egypt that has existed before we lived and that will exist after we die... Life and death, Renisenb, are not of such great account."

"I think people more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possible because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you."

"Marriage is called all sorts of things, a haven, and a refuge, and a crowning glory, and a state of bondage, and lots more. But do you know what I think it is?''What?''A sport!''And a damned good sport too,' said Tommy."

"[Murder] doesn't concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don't know how that shadow is going to affect our lives."

"At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled."

"...It was borne in upon her audience that the outside of Jane's charming head was distinctly superior to the inside."

"The truth must be quite plain, if one could just clear away the litter."

"But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep. Now whenever that young man looked he looked like a sheep I take back all is this morning. It is genuine."

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."

"Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking.""An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it."

"I think you are wise. You haven't got what it takes for this job. You are like Rosemary's father. He couldn't understand Lenin's dictum: 'Away with softness.'"I thought of Hercule Poirot's words."I'm content," I said, "to be human...."We sat there in silence, each of use convinced that the other's point of view was wrong."

"Love can be a very frightening thing."That is why most great love stories are tragedies."

"There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of a person [she] was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that spring the necessity of our questions."

"To know when to use the truth is the essence of successful deception."

"And families now, families who have been separated throughout the year, assemble once more together. Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy."

"When the sun shines you cannot see the moon," he said. "But when the sun is gone ah,when the sun is gone."

"It is romantic, yes,' agreed Hercule Poirot. 'It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun'."

"Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend."

"An appreciative listener is always stimulating."

"One can't do anything without a man. Men know so much, and are able to get information in so many ways that are simply impossible to women."

"There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!"

"Death was for-the other people."

"Ah, but you must have a Christmas uncomplicated by murder."

"She's had a long life of experience in noticing evil, fancying evil, suspecting evil and going forth to do battle with evil."

"Mademoiselle, I speak as a friend. Bury your dead! ... Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.''I'm sure that would suit dear Linnet admirably.'Poirot made a gesture. 'I am not thinking of her at this moment! I am thinking of you. You have suffered - yes - but what you are doing now will only prolong the suffering."

"Yes, it was dangerous, but we are not put into this world, Mr. Burton, to avoid danger when an important fellow creature's life is at stake. You understand me?"

"Speech is the deadliest of revealers.' - Hercule Poirot, Cards on the Table."

"A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life."

"I was tired of this silly joking about my 'speaking countenance'. I could keep a secret as well as anyone. Poirot had always persisted in the humiliating belief that I am a transparent character and that anyone can read what is passing in my mind."

"She's not sensual. She doesn't want affairs. It's just cold-blooded experiment on her part and the fun of stirring people up and setting them against each other. She dabbled in that too. She's the sort of woman who's never had a row with anyone in her life--but rows always happen where she is! She makes them happen. She's kind of female Iago. She must have drama. But she doesn't want to be involved herself. She's always outside pulling strings--looking on--enjoying it!"

"You do think you know about everything," said her husband. I do," said Tuppence."

"No one human being knows the full truth about another human being. Not even one's nearest and dearest."

"A meal should always lie lightly on the estomac," said Poirot. "It should not be so heavy as to paralyze thought."

"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."

"Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That's all prehistoric."