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...

Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and...

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

Peter! Were you looking for a horse-shoe?””No; I was expecting the horse, but the shoe is a piece of pure, gorgeous luck.””And observation. I found it.””You did. And I could kiss you for it. You...

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don’t care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that...

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.

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

Perhaps [the critics are right and] the drama is played out now and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world’s history...

It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and—which would not please Lady Astor,...

It is arguable that when Humanists, “Shook off,” as people say, “the trammels of religion,” and discovered things of this world as objects of veneration in their own right… they began to lose the finer...

[T]he more clamour we make about ‘the women’s point of view’, the more we rub it into people that the women’s point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is —...

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,...

Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.

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...

In reaction against the age-old slogan, “woman is the weaker vessel,” or the still more offensive, “woman is a divine creature,” we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that “a woman is...

Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a...

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is...

Do you know how to pick a lock?””Not in the least, I’m afraid.””I often wonder what we go to school for,” said Wimsey.

Incidentally, one has to be very careful with that ‘Bridegroom’ imagery. It is so very apt to land one in Male and Female Principles, Eleusis, and the womb of the Great Mother. And that sort...

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job’s sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is...

My husband would do anything for me …’ It’s degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another.””It’s a very real power, Harriet.””Then … we won’t use it. If we disagree, we’ll fight...

this is the weakness of most ‘edifying’ or ‘propaganda’ literature. There is no diversity…You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also.

The vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity; and the stronger the diversity the more massive the unity.

You’re thinking that people don’t keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt...

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...

Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the...