Quotes From "Gaudy Night" By Dorothy L. Sayers

The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit. Dorothy L. Sayers

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? Dorothy L. Sayers

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. Dorothy L. Sayers

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her.... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all. Dorothy L. Sayers

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. Dorothy L. Sayers

I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”“ Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures. Dorothy L. Sayers

You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a lesson to him, " said Miss Hillyard. "It didn't pay, did it? Say he sacrificed his professional honour for the women and children we hear so much about -- but in the end it left him worse of." But that, " said Peter, "was only because he committed the extra sin of being found out. Dorothy L. Sayers

He was being about as protective as a can-opener. Dorothy L. Sayers

She had her image… and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper–and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further. Dorothy L. Sayers

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them. Dorothy L. Sayers

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”“ Yes, ” said Harriet, “but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel.”“ I don’t think that matters, provided one doesn’t try to persuade one’s self into appropriate feelings. . Dorothy L. Sayers

Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal. Dorothy L. Sayers

The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated–yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyze. You scarcely knew they were there, until–bang! Something quite unexpected blew up like a depth charge and left you marveling, to collect strange floating debris. Dorothy L. Sayers

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought. Dorothy L. Sayers

Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey family that the action of the book takes place in 1935; but if they do, they must not be querulously indignant because the King's Jubilee is not mentioned, or because I have arranged the weather and the moon's changes to suit my own fancy. For, however realistic the background, the novelist's only native country is Cloud-Cuckooland, where they do but jest, poison in jest: no offence in the world. Dorothy L. Sayers