Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. 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. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediæval painting

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Philip wasn't the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I did, you know. But I couldn't stand being made a fool of. I couldn;t stand being put on probation, like an office-boy, to see if I was good enough to be condescended to. I quite thought he was honest when he said he didn't believe in marriage -- and then it turned out that it was a test, to see whether my devotion was abject enough. Well, it wasn't. I didn't like having matrimony offered as a bad-conduct prize.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

There were crimson roses on the bench, they looked like splashes of blood.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is Watson, and you need not say what you were just going to say, because I admit it all.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Why would you family think about it?Oh, my mother's the only one that counts, and she likes you very much from what she's seen of you.So you had me inspected?No-dash ti all, I seem to be saying all the wrong things today. I was absolutely stunned that first day in court, and I rushed off to my mater, who's an absolute dear, and the kind of person who really understands things, and I said, 'Look here! here's the absolutely one and only woman, and she's being put through a simply ghastly awful business and for God's sake come and hold my hand!' You simply don't know how foul it was.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: Facts, Bunter, must have facts. When I was a small boy, I always hated facts. Thought they were nasty, hard things, all nobs. Mervyn Bunter: Yes, my lord. My old mother always used to say... Lord Peter Wimsey: Your mother, Bunter? Oh, I never knew you had one. I always thought you just sort of came along already-made, so it were. Oh, excuse me. How infernally rude of me. Beg pardon, I'm sure. Mervyn Bunter: That's all right, my lord. Lord Peter Wimsey: Thank you. Mervyn Bunter: Yes indeed, I was one of seven. Lord Peter Wimsey: That is pure invention, Bunter, I know better. You are unique. But you were going to tell me about your mater. Mervyn Bunter: Oh yes, my lord. My old mother always used to say that facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, and they generally run away. Lord Peter Wimsey: By Jove, that's courageous, Bunter. What a splendid person she must be. Mervyn Bunter: I think so, my lord.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart. Mr. Delagardie had replied, somewhat drily: No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

What we make is more important than what we are particularly if making is our profession.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers