7
" 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 (Hercule Poirot, #20.5)
19
" 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 (Hercule Poirot, #20.5)
