Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.

Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don’t want either to give or to take … You don’t want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person.””That’s true. That’s the truest...

[On marriage and permanent attachment:]Well, well — the prizes all go to the women who ‘play their cards well’ — but if they can only be won in that way, I would rather lose the...

[I]t’s difficult to make people see that what you have been taught counts for nothing, and that the only things worth having are the things you find out for yourself. Also, that when so many...

I can’t think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one’s grammar. It’s a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I’m afraid.

Some people’s blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.

There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever...

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...

(One character on another:)”Don’t you know that I passionately dote on every chin on his face?

Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain;If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death!

The only Christian work is good work well done.

For God’s sake, let’s take the word ‘possess’ and put a brick round its neck and drown it … We can’t possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have.

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...

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...

Heaven deliver us, what’s a poet? Something that can’t go to bed without making a song about it.

And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an undeniable automatic pistol.It was at this point that Lord...

If God made everything, did He make the Devil?’ This is the kind of embarrassing question which any child can ask before breakfast, and for which no neat and handy formula is provided in the...

The planet’s tyrant, dotard Death, had held his gray mirror before them for a moment and shown them the image of things to come.

There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the...

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...

Books… are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Don’t be so damned discouraging,” said Wimsey. “I have already carefully explained to you that this time I am investigating this business. Anybody would think you had no confidence in me.””People have been wrongly condemned...

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...

Go away and don’t be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle.

Darling, if you danced like an elderly elephant with arthritis, I would dance the sun and moon into the sea with you. I have waited a thousand years to see you dance in that frock.

What do we find God ‘doing about’ this business of sin and evil?…God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass...

His [Lord Peter’s] long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: “You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls”; if the answer is, “But I...

But — my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything — and he is — THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is...

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

The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second.

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...

A man once asked me … how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed...

I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.

What’ll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?” demanded Miss Haydock.”Well, Eve — it will be awkward if I do that. Poor lamb! I shall have to make him believe I only...