Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes - Page 9

Well-bred English people never have imagination.

Anythin' wrong leaves a kind of impression on the eye; brain trots along afterwards with the warnin'.

Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

There's ways and ways of dyin'. Some is took, and some takes French leave, and others is 'elped out of life.

Birth is beastly - and death - and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful suprème de sole, with the caviare in boats, and the croûtons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets - I could cry. But there it is, don't you know.

Britain possesses no climate, only weather.

And then, at night, the lit lamp and the drawn curtain, with the flutter of the turned page and soft scrape of pen on paper the only sounds to break the silence between quarter- and quarter-chime.

He was being about as protective as a can-opener.

... to mention honor was to suggest its opposite.

The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence.

The keeping of an idle woman is a badge of superior social status.

She always says, my lord, that facts are like cows. If you look them in the face hard enough they generally run away.

make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.

It's very good of you--" "No, no, not at all. It's my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don't mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I'll call again, if I may." "I will give the footman orders to admit you," said the prisoner, gravely, "you will always find me at home.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

It's not the innocent young things that need gentle handling--it's the ones that have been frightened and hurt.

It is impossible for human nature to believe that money is not there. It seems so much more likely that the money is there and only needs bawling for.

all conscious thought is a process in time; so that to think consciously about Time is like trying to use a foot-rule to measure its own length.

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.

the autobiography is at one and the same time a single element in the series of the writer's created works and an interpretation of the whole series.

Of all devils let loose in the world there is no devil like devoted love.

It is the first duty of a gentleman to remember in the morning who he went to bed with the night before.

Well, it seems like a miracle to be able to look forward-to-to see all the minutes in front of one come hopping along with something marvellous in them, instead of just[Pg 295] saying, Well, that one didn't actually hurt and the next may be quite bearable if only something beastly doesn't come pouncing out--

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?