“I should like to knock their silly heads together. What is the sense of laughing all the time? They are not saying anything funny.”

“It's really very unpleasant. And not being able to say anything to answer back makes it rankle more, if you know what I mean.”

“We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, ‘What’s the good of doing anything?’ Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age.”

“I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?""That is so.""Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."Poirot shrugged his shoulders."Eh bien, I have got on very well without them.""Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view all together. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy--what are you going to do then with your leisure hours?”

“Human curiosity. Such a very interesting thing. Think of what we owe to it throughout history. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity.”

“What is a secretary to a millionaire? Nine times out of ten it is a young man who likes living soft. A young man with nice manners and a taste for luxury and no brains and no enterprise, and if there is anything that is a softer job than being secretary to a millionaire it is marrying a rich woman for her money.”

“What can I say at seventy-five? "Thank God for my good life,and for all the love that has been given to me.”