Quotes from Dorothy L. Sayers

In any case,' I added, 'I don't know that the great-niece is excluded under the Act—I only understand that she may be. In any case, there are still six months before the Act comes into force, and many things may happen before then.' " 'You mean that Auntie may die,' she said, 'but she's

Now, don't you worry, Mr. Appledore. I'm thinkin' the best thing I can do is to trundle the old lady down to my mother and take her out of your way, otherwise you might be findin' your Christian feelings gettin' the better of you some fine day, and there's nothin' like Christian feelin's for upsettin' a man's domestic comfort.

Here again, the souls 'have what they chose'; they enjoy that kind of after-life which they themselves imagined for the virtuous dead; their failure lay in not imagining better. They are lost because they 'had not faith' — primarily the Christian faith, but also, more generally, faith in the nature of things.

Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris.

A wide, passionate mouth — a shape so wonderful that even in that strenuous moment sixteen generations of feudal privilege stirred in Lord Peter's blood.

and he was as ready for mischief as a wilderness of monkeys.

At present we have no clear grasp of the principle that every man should do the work for which he is fitted by nature!

I has such a sinking in my inside I has to get up and eat biscuits.

He spoke in a series of gruff barks, and held himself so rigidly that if he had swallowed a poker it could only have produced unseemly curves and flexions in his figure.

But we can never hope for a whole jury-box full of ecclesiastical diehards.

The basket was opened, and a ginger head emerged resentfully.

Discretion plays a major part in making up the salesman's art, for truths that no one can believe are calculated to deceive.

Miss Findlater spoke with the air of a disillusioned rake, who has sucked life's orange and found it dead sea fruit.

The young man, whose reddish hair, long nose, and slightly sodden eyes gave him the appearance of a dissipated fox, greeted Wimsey with a disagreeable stare.

As the Head of a woman's college she must, thought Harriet, have had a distasteful task; for she looked as though the word 'compromise' had been omitted from her vocabulary; and all statesmanship is compromise.

You can't carry through any principle without doing violence to somebody. Either directly or indirectly. Every time you disturb the balance of nature you let in violence. And if you leave nature alone you get violence in any case.

The agents of the miraculous which the novelist has at his command are, roughly speaking, conversion and coincidence;

One of these days you'll go too far, and somebody will murder you.' 'I shouldn't be in the least surprised,' said Lord Peter, pleasantly.

In my experience, the older a medical man gets, the less willing he is to make ex cathedra pronouncements, and the more he learns that Nature has her own way of confounding self-confident prophets.

It's a very handsome room, isn't it, madam? But it seems a great shame to keep up this big place just for women to study books in. I can't see what girls want with books. Books won't teach them to be good wives.

On the morning of the wedding-day, Lord Peter emerged from Bunter's hands a marvel of sleek brilliance. His primrose-coloured hair was so exquisite a work of art that to eclipse it with his glossy hat was like shutting up the sun in a shrine of jet; his spats, light trousers, and exquisitely polished shoes formed a tone-symphony in monochrome.

Hitherto, said Lord Peter, as they picked their painful way through the little wood on the trail of Gent's No. 10's, I have always maintained that those obliging criminals who strew their tracks with little articles of personal adornment--here he is, on a squashed fungus--were an invention of detective fiction for the benefit of the author. I see that I have still something to learn about my job.

I haven't time and I don't want the money. Why should I? I'm not a dean or an actress.

Men of science spend much time and effort in the attempt to disentangle words from their metaphorical and traditional associations;