Hercule Poirot's Christmas Quotes

Virtue doesn’t pay.

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

There is a certain kind of meekness – of submission – brings out the worst in a man – whereas that same man, faced by spirit and determination, might be a different creature!

There are all sorts of deep instincts in man of which he himself is unaware. The craving for blood – the demand for sacrifice!

The world is very cruel to women. They must do what they can for themselves – while they are young. When they are old and ugly no one will help them.

The result of pretending to be a more amiable, a more forgiving, a more high-minded person than one really is, has sooner or later the effect of causing one to behave as a more disagreeable, a more ruthless and an altogether more unpleasant person than is actually the case! If you dam the stream of natural behaviour, mon ami, sooner or later the dam bursts and a cataclysm occurs!

The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.

Take what you like and pay for it, says God.

Nothing is so boring as devotion.

It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violence for the reason that when their control does snap, it does so entirely!

In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth!

I believe the present matters – not the past! The past must go. If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. We see it in exaggerated terms – a false perspective.