The Labours of Hercules Quotes

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“My remarks are, as always, apt, sound, and to the point. (Hercule Poirot)”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“These blondes, sir, they're responsible for a lot of trouble.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Got on! Got on! It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“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?”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“It is fundamentals that matter --- not the trappings. (Alice Cunningham)”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Mon cher docteur! Do you not think I know the female mentality? The village gossip, it is based always, always on the relations of the sexes. If a man poisons his wife in order to travel to the North Pole or to enjoy the peace of a bachelor existence—it would not interest his fellow-villagers for a minute!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Can one build an honest house on dishonest foundation? I do not know. But I do know that I want to try. (Edward Ferrier)”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt--an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become acquainted with the classics. Long ago. Now, alas, it was too late....”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“It is the sex angle that sells stories, that makes news. give people scandal allied to sex and it appeals far more than any mere political chicanery or fraud. (Hercule Poirot)”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“It will prove, I fear, too Herculean a task for us.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“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.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Take this Hercules -this hero! Hero, indeed! What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Is he then an unhappy man?"
Poirot said :
"So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy."
The nun said softly: "Ah, a rich man...”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“She took disaster as it should be taken, dealing with it competently and thereby reducing it almost to insignificance.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labors of Hercules

“But seriously Poirot, what a hobby! Compare that to--" his voice sank to an appreciative purr--"an easy chair in front of a wood fire in a long low room lined with books--must be a long room--not a square one. Books all round one. A glass of port--and a book open in your hand. Time rolls back as you read.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“My dear Mr. Schwartz, you appeared in the nick of time. It might have been a drama on the stage! I am very much in your debt.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“That she can reform a rake," said Poirot, "has always been one of women's dearest illusions!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Georges, never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labors of Hercules

“Take this Hercules - this hero! hero, indeed! What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies! Poirot was reminded of one Adolfe Durand, a butcher who had been tried at Lyon in 1895 - a creature of oxlike strength who had killed several children. The defence had been epilepsy - from which he undoubtedly suffered - though whether grand mal or petit mal had been an argument of several days' discussion. This ancient Hercules probably suffered from grand mal. No, Poirot shook his head, if that was the Greeks' idea of a hero, then meassured by modern standards, it certainly would not do. The whole classical pattern shocked him. These gods and goddesses - they seemed to have as many different aliases as a modern criminal. indeed they seemed to be definitely criminal types, Drink, debauchery, incest, rape, homicide and chicanery - enought to keep a fuge d'Instruction constantly busy. No decent family life, No order, no method. even in their crimes, no order or method!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“You might start a new religion yourself, with the creed: 'There is no one so clever as Hercule Poirot, Amen, D. C. Repeat ad lib.'!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“He had not remembered her name, but he had seen her dance—had been carried away and fascinated by the supreme art that can make you forget art.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“The Classics aren’t a ladder leading to quick success like a modern correspondence course!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labors of Hercules

“The man obviously wanted to tell him something - and as obviously had lost the art of simple narration. Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts - not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase - that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“It is misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“To be content with what Nature has given you, that - that is stupid!”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules