Quotes from Dorothy L. Sayers

It is always reasonably easy to get conversation going in a pub, and it will be a black day for detectives when beer is abolished. After

Oh! are you detecting now?' 'Like anything. If you could take the top of my head off, you would see the wheels whizzing round.' 'I see. You're not detecting me, I hope.' 'Everybody always hopes that.

Miss Climpson's active mind quickly conjured up a picture of the rabbit-fair-haired and a little paunchy, with a habit of saying, I'll ask the wife. Miss Climpson wondered why Providence saw fit to create such men. For Miss Climpson, men were intended to be masterful, even though wicked or foolish. She was a spinster made and not born- a perfectly womanly woman.

When the laws regulating human society are so formed as to come into collision with the nature of things, and in particular with the fundamental realities of human nature, they will end by producing an impossible situation which, unless the laws are altered, will issue in such catastrophes as war, pestilence and famine. Catastrophes thus caused are the execution of universal law upon arbitrary enactments which contravene the facts; they are thus properly called by theologians, judgments of God.

No," said Harriet, who had been exercising

Do you find it easy to get drunk on words? So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober. Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night

I love you.' 'Bravely said – though I had to screw it out of you like a cork out of a bottle. Why should that phrase be so difficult? I – personal pronoun, subjective case; L – O – V – E, love, verb, active, meaning – Well, on Mr Squeers's principle, go to bed and work it out.'  

Yes—but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won't understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they'll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless, they'll be quite wrong both times—but they won't ever know it, and you won't know it at first, and it'll worry you.

Her faculty for hitting the right nail on the head is almost miraculous – especially as all her blows have the air of being delivered at random. Housekeeping!

This was a syllogistic monstrosity even worse than the last, thought Wimsey. A man who could reason like that could not reason at all. He constructed a new syllogism for himself. The man who committed this murder was not a fool. Weldon is a fool. Therefore Weldon did not commit this murder. That appeared to be sound, so far as it went.

You give me your advice, and stand by ready to rally round with your myrmidons in case there's any roughhousing.

I set out in a lordly manner to offer you heaven and earth. I find that all I have to give you is Oxford—which is yours already.

But that's men all over. They want the thing done and then, of course, they don't like the consequences. Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.

With five minutes to go, Wimsey watched the first ball of the over come skimming down towards him. It was a beauty. It was jam. He smote it as Saul smote the Philistines. It soared away in a splendid parabola, struck the pavilion roof with a noise like the crack of doom, rattled down the galvanized iron roofing, bounced into the enclosure where the scorers were sitting and broke a bottle of lemonade. The match was won.

One must remember that though in one sense the Other World was a definite place, yet in another the kingdom of gods was within one, Earth and fairy-land co-exist upon the same foot of ground. It was all a matter of the seeing eye...the dweller in this world can become aware of an existence on a totally different plane. To go from earth to faery is like passing from this time to eternity; it is not a journey in space, but a change of mental outlook.

I dare say that's an idea which has already occurred to you, but with the weight of my great mind behind it, no doubt it strikes the imagination more forcibly.

The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning.

what does old Donne say? "God knows in what part of the world every grain of every man's dust lies

The village that voted the earth was flat doubtless modified its own behavior and its system of physics accordingly, but its vote did not in any way modify the shape of the earth. That remains what it is, whether human beings agree or disagree about it, or even if they never discuss it or take notice of it at all. And if the earth's shape entails consequences for humanity, those consequences will continue to occur, whether humanity likes it or not, in conformity with the laws of nature.

Controversy is bad for the spirit, however enlivening to the wits.

But if you believe that Jesus was wholly God, then to condemn His conduct is presumptuous. If you believe that He was not wholly God, but only partly or in some respects divine, you are a heretic. If you think He was not God at all, you are an infidel.

Have you any Scotch blood in you, Parker?" inquired his colleague, bitterly. "Not that I know of," replied Parker. "Why?" "Because of all the cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded devils I know," said Lord Peter, "you are the most cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded.

EXCELLENT, BUNTER," SAID LORD Peter, sinking with a sigh into a luxurious armchair. "I couldn't have done better myself. The thought of the Dante makes my mouth water—and the 'Four Sons of Aymon.' And you've saved me £60—that's

Well, well. What can't be cured must be endured. This is our last hope gone. We shall be reduced to ringing minors.