Subject: Fate
Quote: “Eh bien, Mademoiselle, all through my life I have observed one thing—‘All one wants one gets!’ Who knows? You may get more than you bargain for.”
Character: M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story: 10—On the Blue Train
Book Title/Copyright: The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928Subject: Life
Quote: “Life is a difficult business…. You’ll know that when you come to my age. It needs infinite courage and a lot of endurance. And in the end, one wonders, ‘Was it worthwhile?’…It’s rather cheap to say gloomy things about life.”
Character: Mrs. Lorrimer
Chapter/Story: 18 – Tea Interlude
Book Title/Copyright: Cards on the Table, 1936Subject: Life
Quote: “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…whatever else it is, is not reasonable!”
Character: M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story: 13
Book Title/Copyright: Sad Cypress, 1939 Subject: Punishment
Quote: Miss Emily murmured that God moved in a mysterious way.
“No, I said. “There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I might concede you the Devil. God doesn’t really need to punish us…. We’re so very busy punishing ourselves.”
Character: Jerry Burton
Chapter/Story: 3
Book Title/Copyright: The Moving Finger, 1942Subject: The Real Tragedy of Life
Quote: Who was it who had said that the real tragedy of life was that you got what you wanted?
Character: Omniscient narrator
Chapter/Story: 3
Book Title/Copyright: Murder After Hours (The Hollow), 1946
