470 Quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

So she will,” said the Dowager. “You’ll see that young man in the Cabinet before very long. Such a handsome couple on a public platform, and very sound, I’m told, about pigs, and that’s so important, the British breakfast-table being what it is.

A man was taken to the Zoo and shown the giraffe. After gazing at it a little in silence: ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

Possessiveness isn’t unprecedented.’ ‘On the contrary – it’s as common as mud. But to recognise it in one’s self and chuck it overboard is – unusual. If you want to be a normal person, my girl, you should let it rip and give yourself and everybody else hell with it. And you should call it something else – devotion or self-sacrifice and that sort of thing. If you go on behaving with all this reason and generosity, everybody will think we don’t give a damn for one another.

She suffered much from the adjacent presence of her daughter-in-law, whose misfortune it was to become disagreeable when she was unhappy – perhaps the heaviest curse that can be laid on man, who is born to sorrow.

There are many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation,” said Parker placidly.

Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a hundred kings – people will stand there for hours on end, with their ear-drums splitting – why? Simply for the pleasure of being idle while other people work.

In the terms in which you set it, the problem is unanswerable; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, those terms do not apply. You have asked the question in a form that is much too limited; the ‘solution’ must be brought in from outside your sphere of reference altogether.

Still, it doesn’t do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.

Like all male creatures Wimsey was a simple soul at bottom.