Hercule Poirot Quotes

“It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." ~ Poirot”
― Agatha Christie

“Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]”
― Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress

“I mean, imagine how some unfortunate Master Criminal would feel, on coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, if he found that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the weekend there, but Hercule Poirot, as well." ~ Bertram "Bertie" Wooster”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.”
― Agatha Christie

“I am all that there is of the most real.”
― Agatha Christie

“Ah, but my dear sir, the why must never be obvious. That is the whole point.”
― Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs

“Use your eyes. Use your ears. Use your brains---if you've got any. And, if necessary--act.”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

“I, Hercule Poirot, am not amused.”
― Agatha Christie, The Hollow

“She might have trusted you. But Mademoiselle Katherine has spent a great deal of her life listening, and those who have listened do not find it easy to talk; they keep their sorrows and joys to themselves and tell no one”
― Hercule Poirot, The mystery of the blue train, Agatha Christie

“You belong to the League of Nations?’
‘I belong to the world, Madame,’ said Poirot dramatically.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

“Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That's all prehistoric.”
― Agatha Christie

“If you've lost, you've lost.”
― Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs

“M. Van Aldin is an obstinate man," said Poirot drily. "I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train

“Hercule Poirot spread out his hands in his most foreign manner.”
― Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table

“It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality. . . . We've only one life to live.”
― Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs

“Do you know what you sound like?' said Mrs. Oliver. 'A computer. You know. You're programming yourself. That's what they call it, isn't it? I mean you're feeding all these things into yourself all day and then you're going to see what comes out.”
― Agatha Christie, Hallowe'en Party

“I can admire the perfect murderer--I can also admire a tiger-- that splendid tawny-striped beast. But I will admire him from outside his cage. I will not go inside.
That is to say, not unless it is my duty to do so. For you see, Mr. Shaitana, the tiger might spring. . . .”
― Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table

“Take what you want and pay for it, says God.”
― Proverb

“We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder.”
― Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders

“I have news for you. Splendid news. Somebody has tried to kill me.”
― Agatha Christie, Mrs. McGinty's Dead

“[...] She is not for you, that one! Take it from Papa Poirot!”
― Agatha Christie, The Murder on the Links

“Uncertainty creates panic.”
― Agatha Christie, Poirot Investigates

“Drink up your wine,' ordered Poirot.”
― Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders

“Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dim fog clouded the station. Large engines hissed superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the cold raw air. Everything was dirty and smoke‐grimed.”
― Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas

“Why not now as much as before? Nothing has changed."

"But the evidence is so conclusive."

"Yes, too conclusive."

We turned in at the gate of Leastways Cottage, and proceeded up the now familiar stairs.

"Yes, yes, too conclusive," continued Poirot, almost to himself. "Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined--sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured--so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends."

"How do you make that out?"

"Because, so long as the evidence against him was vague and intangible, it was very hard to disprove. But, in his anxiety, the criminal has drawn the net so closely that one cut will set Inglethorp free.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“I looked at Poirot in silent amazement. The colossal cheek of the little man! Who on earth but Poirot would have thought of a trial for murder as a restorer of conjugal happiness!

"I perceive your thoughts, mon ami," said Poirot, smiling at me. "No one but Hercule Poirot would have attempted such a thing! And you are wrong in condemning it. The happiness of one man and woman is the greatest thing in all the world.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“[...] Man is an unoriginal animal. Unoriginal within the law in his daily respectable life, equally unoriginal outside the law. [...]”
― Agatha Christie, The Murder on the Links

“Poirot, if there's anything to be found here for God's sake go ahead and find it.”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

“How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think”
― Hercule Poirot

“You press admirably the trousers, George, but the imagination, you possess it not. -Hercule Poirot, 'Black Coffee”
― Agatha Christie, adapted by Charles Osborne