"You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?" It will not." If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me." I, also M. Ratchett." What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said."
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.
"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."
"I'm never going to believe a Poirot mystery again. Never. All those witnesses going, "Yes, I remember it was 3:06 p.m. exactly, because I glanced at the clock as I reached for the sugar tongs, and Lady Favisham was quite clearly sitting on the right-hand side of the fireplace." Bollocks. They have no idea where Lady Favisham was, they just don't want to admit it in front of Poirot. I'm amazed he gets anywhere."
"Poirot said placidly, "One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this - " he tapped his egg-shaped head - "this, that functions!"
"Trains are relentless things, aren't they, Monsieur Poirot? People are murdered and die, but they go on just the same. I am talking nonsense, but you know what I mean." "Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so." "Why?" "Because the train gets to its journey's end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle." "'Journey's end in lovers meeting.'" Lenox laughed. "That is not going to be true for me." "Yes--yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it." The whistle of the engine came again. "Trust the train, Mademoiselle," murmured Poirot again. "And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows."
"But Aunt Maureen makes smashing omelettes." Julia Upjohn. "She makes smashing omelettes." Poirot's voice was happy. He sighed. "Then Hercule Poirot has not lived in vain, he said. It was I who taught your Aunt Maureen to make an omelette."
"For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house!"
There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to grooming and treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobody else who had any moustache half as good.
"Ah, mais c'est Anglais ca," he murmured, "everything in black and white, everything clear cut and well defined. But life, it is not like that, Mademoiselle. There are things that are not yet, but which cast their shadow before."
"Oh! Do not excite yourself. Shall I say that he interested me because he was trying to grow a mustache and as yet the result is poor." Poirot stroked his own magnificent mustache tenderly. "It is an art," he murmured, "the growing of the mustache! I have sympathy for all who attempt it."
There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!
"He rose, placed another small log on the fire, sat back down in his armchair, and opened his book. "What are you reading?" Reggie asked. "On a wild night like this? Agatha Christie, of course. I still feel compelled to see if Hercule Poirot's 'little gray cells' will do their job one more time. It seems to often inspire my own brain, however inferior it might be to the diminutive Belgian's."