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Do You Solemnly Swear Never To Conceal A Vital Clue From The Reader? Do You Promise To Observe Seemly Moderation In The Use Of Gangs, Conspiracies, Super Criminals And Lunatics And Utterly And Forever To Forswear Mysterious Poisons Unknown To Science? Will You Honor The King's English? ... If You Fail To Keep Your Promise, May Other Writers Steal Your Plots And Your Pages Swarm With Misprints.

-Dorothy L. Sayers

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Do You Solemnly Swear

Dorothy L. Sayers

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Do You Solemnly Swear Never To Conceal A Vital Clue From The Reader? Do You Promise To Observe Seemly Moderation In The Use Of Gangs, Conspiracies, Super Criminals And Lunatics And Utterly And Forever To Forswear Mysterious Poisons Unknown To Science? Will You Honor The King's English? ... If You Fail To Keep Your Promise, May Other Writers Steal Your Plots And Your Pages Swarm With Misprints.

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More From Dorothy L. Sayers

Fantasy Works Inwards Upon Its Author, Blurring The Boundary Between The Visioned And The Actual, And Associating Itself Ever Moreclosely With The Ego, So That The Child Who Has Fantasied Himself A Murderer Ends By Becoming A Loeb Or A Leopold. The Creative Imagination Works Outwards, Steadily Increasing The Gap Between The Visioned And The Actual, Till This Becomes The Great Gulf Fixed Between Art And Nature. Few Writers Of Crime-stories Become Murderers--if Any Do, It Is Not The Result Of Identifying Themselves With Their Murderous Heroes.

I Think This Co-operative Scheme Is An Uncommonly Good One. It's Much Easier To Work On Someone Else's Job Than One's Own - Gives One That Delightful Feelin' Of Interferin' And Bossin' About, Combined With The Glorious Sensation That Another Fellow Is Takin' All One's Own Work Off One's Hands.

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 They Hear The Words 'i Devise And Bequeath.

You Can Give It A Long Name If You Like, But I'm An Old-fashioned Woman And I Call It Mother-wit, And It's So Rare For A Man To Have It That If He Does You Write A Book About Him And Call Him Sherlock Holmes.

The Only Sin Passion Can Commit Is To Be Joyless.

Everybody Is, I Suppose, Either Classic Or Gothic By Nature. Either You Feel In Your Bones That Buildings Should Be Rectangular Boxes With Lids To Them, Or You Are Moved To The Marrow By Walls That Climb And Branch, And Break Into A Inflorescence Of Pinnacles.

Trouble Shared Is Trouble Halved.

There Were Crimson Roses On The Bench; They Looked Like Splashes Of Blood.

Death Seems To Provide The Minds Of The Anglo-saxon Race With A Greater Fund Of Amusement Than Any Other Single Subject.

[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 Appear To Have Been Hammered Out By The Village Blacksmith In A State Of Intoxication; The Minute You Get The Easy Touch Of The Real Craftsman With Centuries Of Civilisation Behind Him, You Get Literature.

A Person Who Tells A Secret, Swearing The Recipient To Secrecy In Turn, Is Asking Of The Other Person A Discretion Which He Is Abrogating Himself.

Heroics That Don't Come Off Are The Very Essence Of Burlesque.

... To Mention Honor Was To Suggest Its Opposite.

I Often Think When A Man's Once Past A Certain Age, The Older He Grows The Tougher He Gets, And Women The Same Or More So.

A Facility For Quotation Covers The Absence Of Original Thought.

Original Thought

To Foment Grievance And To Set Men At Variance Is The Trade By Which Agitators Thrive And Journalists Make Money.

. . . The Fellow's Got A Bee In His Bonnet. Thinks God's A Secretion Of The Liver--all Right Once In A Way, But There's No Need To Keep On About It. There's Nothing You Can't Prove If Your Outlook Is Only Sufficiently Limited.

To The Average Man, Life Presents Itself, Not As Material Malleable To His Hand, But As A Series Of Problems...which He Has To Solve...and He Is Distressed To Find That The More Means He Can Dispose Of-such As Machine-power, Rapid Transport, And General Civilized Amenities, The More His Problems Grow In Hardness And Complexity....perhaps The First Thing He Can Learn Form The Artists Is That The Only Way Of 'mastering' One's Material Is To Abandon The Whole Conception Of Mastery And To Co-operate With It In Love: Whosoever Will Be A Lord Of Life, Let Him Be Its Servant.

But To Lord Peter The World Presented Itself As An Entertaining Labyrinth Of Side-issues

The Devil ... Is Much Better Served By Exploiting Our Virtues Than By Appealing To Our Lower Passions; Consequently, It Is When The Devil Looks Most Noble And Reasonable That He Is Most Dangerous.

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.

Ethical Principles

A Marriage Of Two Independent And Equally Irritable Intelligences Seems To Me Reckless To The Point Of Insanity.

I'm Getting Very Old And My Bones Ache. My Sins Are Deserting Me, And If I Could Only Have My Time Over Again I'd Take Care To Commit More Of Them.

Lord, Teach Us To Take Our Hearts And Look Them In The Face, However Difficult It May Be.

But What Are You Going To Do About The People Who Are Cursed With Both Hearts And Brains?

We Are Much Too Much Inclined In These Days To Divide People Into Permanent Categories, Forgetting That A Category Only Exists For Its Special Purpose And Must Be Forgotten As Soon As That Purpose Is Served.

One Must Not Only Die Daily, But Every Day We Must Be Born Again.

Do You Find It Easy To Get Drunk On Words?" "so Easy That, To Tell You The Truth, I Am Seldom Perfectly Sober.

The Ideal Of A Perfectly Functioning Democracy Is One Person, One Vote; The Ideal Of A Perfectly Functioning Market Is One Dollar, One Vote.it's A Hoary Superstition That Democratically Elected Governments Invariably Function As Instruments Of The Collective Will.a Society In Which Consumption Has To Be Artificially Stimulated In Order To Keep Production Going Is A Society Founded On Trash And Waste.

The Autobiography Is At One And The Same Time A Single Element In The Series Of The Writer's Created Works And An Interpretation Of The Whole Series.

Whereas, Up To The Present, There Is Only One Known Way Of Getting Born, There Are Endless Ways Of Getting Killed.

Nothing Is More Cruel To The Young Than To Tell Them That The World Is Made For Youth.

The Only Christian Work Is Good Work, Well Done

Anythin' Wrong Leaves A Kind Of Impression On The Eye; Brain Trots Along Afterwards With The Warnin'.

If People Will Bring Dynamite Into A Powder Factory, They Must Expect Explosions.

I Have Never Regretted Paradise Lost Since I Discovered That It Contained No Eggs-and-bacon.

I Admit It Is Better Fun To Punt Than Be Punted, And That A Desire To Have All The Fun Is Nine-tenths Of The Law Of Chivalry.

None Of Us Feels The True Love Of God Till We Realize How Wicked We Are. But You Can't Teach People That - They Have To Learn By Experience.

On The Strength Of His Literary Output Alone... Any Woman Of Sense Would Decline To Tackle D.h. Lawrence At 1,000 Pounds A Night.

However Entrancing It Is To Wander Unchecked Through A Garden Of Bright Images, Are We Not Enticing Your Mind From Another Subject Of Almost Equal Importance?

The Dogma Of The Incarnation Is The Most Dramatic Thing About Christianity, And Indeed, The Most Dramatic Thing That Ever Entered The Mind Of Man; But If You Tell People So, They Stare At You In Bewilderment.

What We Make Is More Important Than What We Are, Particularly If Making Is Our Profession.

To Know One's Own Limitations Is The Hallmark Of Competence.

And Then, At Night, The Lit Lamp And The Drawn Curtain, With The Flutter Of The Turned Page And Soft Scrape Of Pen On Paper The Only Sounds To Break The Silence Between Quarter- And Quarter-chime.

The War Has Jerked Us Pretty Sharply Into Consciousness About This Slug-a-bed Sin Of Sloth, And Perhaps We Need Not Say Too Much About It. But Two Warnings Are Rather Necessary.

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 Don't," There Is No More To Be Said.

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.

Of All Devils Let Loose In The World There Is No Devil Like Devoted Love.

There's Ways And Ways Of Dyin'. Some Is Took, And Some Takes French Leave, And Others Is 'elped Out Of Life.

Do You Solemnly Swear Never To Conceal A Vital Clue From The Reader? Do You Promise To Observe Seemly Moderation In The Use Of Gangs, Conspiracies, Super Criminals And Lunatics And Utterly And Forever To Forswear Mysterious Poisons Unknown To Science? Will You Honor The King's English? ... If You Fail To Keep Your Promise, May Other Writers Steal Your Plots And Your Pages Swarm With Misprints.

There Is Only One Kind Of Wisdom That Has Any Social Value, And That Is The Knowledge Of One's Own Limitations.

It's Not The Innocent Young Things That Need Gentle Handling--it's The Ones That Have Been Frightened And Hurt.

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 Those Words Might Have Been Said With Complete Conviction, And That Was On The Eve Of The Resurrection.

Even Idiots Ocasionally Speak The Truth Accidentally.

Speak The Truth

I Love You - I Am At Rest With You - I Have Come Home.

It's Very Inconvenient Being A Sculptor. It's Like Playing The Double-bass; One's So Handicapped By One's Baggage.

Once Lay Down The Rule That The Job Comes First And You Throw That Job Open To Every Individual, Man Or Woman, Fat Or Thin, Tall Or Short, Ugly Or Beautiful, Who Is Able To Do That Job Better Than The Rest Of The World.

There Is No Solution To Death.life Intends To Kill Us.

The Trouble Is. . .that Everybody Sneers At Restrictions And Demands Freedom, Till Something Annoying Happens; Then They Demand Angrily What Has Become Of The Discipline.

If We Did Not Know All His Retorts By Heart, If We Had Not Taken The Sting Out Of Them By Incessant Repetition In The Accents Of The Pulpit, And If We Had Not Somehow Got It Into Our Heads That Brains Were Rather Reprehnsible, We Should Reckon Him Among The Greatest Wits Of All Time. Nobody Else, In Three Brief Years, Has Achieved Such An Output Of Epigram.

He Was Being About As Protective As A Can-opener.

In The World It Is Called Tolerance, But In Hell It Is Called Despair...the Sin That Believes In Nothing, Cares For Nothing, Seeks To Know Nothing, Interferes With Nothing, Enjoys Nothing, Hates Nothing, Finds Purpose In Nothing, Lives For Nothing, And Remains Alive Because There Is Nothing For Which It Will Die.

Paradoxical As It May Seem, To Believe In Youth Is To Look Backward; To Look Forward We Must Believe In Age.

The People Who Hanged Christ Never, To Do Them Justice, Accused Him Of Being A Bore - On The Contrary; They Thought Him Too Dynamic To Be Safe. It Has Been Left For Later Generations To Muffle Up That Shattering Personality And Surround Him With An Atmosphere Of Tedium.

Birth Is Beastly - And Death - And Digestion, If It Comes To That. Sometimes When I Think Of What's Happening Inside Me To A Beautiful Suprème De Sole, With The Caviare In Boats, And The Croûtons And The Jolly Little Twists Of Potato And All The Gadgets - I Could Cry. But There It Is, Don't You Know.

No, No, There Must Be A Limit To The Baseness Even Of Publishers.

A Continual Atmosphere Of Hectic Passion Is Very Trying If You Haven't Got Any Of Your Own.

I Entirely Agree That A Historian Ought To Be Precise In Detail; But Unless You Take All The Characters And Circumstances Into Account, You Are Reckoning Without The Facts. The Proportions And Relations Of Things Are Just As Much Facts As The Things Themselves.

God Wastes Nothing - Not Even Sin. The Soul That Has Struggled And Come Through Is Enriched By It's Experiences, And Grace Does Not Merely Blot Out The Evil Past But In The Most Literal Sense "makes It Good."

No Share-pusher Could Vend His Worthless Stock, If He Could Not Count On Meeting, In His Prospective Victim, An Unscrupulous Avarice As Vicious As His Own, But Stupider. Every Time A Man Expects, As He Says, His Money To Work For Him, He Is Expecting Other People To Work For Him.

All Conscious Thought Is A Process In Time; So That To Think Consciously About Time Is Like Trying To Use A Foot-rule To Measure Its Own Length.

If It Were Not For The War, This War Would Suit Me Down To The Ground.

Those Who Make Some Other Person Their Job... Are Dangerous.

Man Is Never Truly Himself Except When He Is Actively Creating Something.

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.

Nothing Is More Vulgar Than A Careful Avoidance Of Beginning A Letter With The First Person Singular.

Work Is Not Primarily A Thing One Does To Live But The Thing One Lives To Do. It Is, Or It Should Be, The Full Expression Of The Worker's Faculties, The Thing In Which He Finds Spiritual, Mental And Bodily Satisfaction, And The Medium In Which He Offers Himself To God.

But That's Men All Over ... Poor Dears, They Can't Help It. They Haven't Got Logical Minds.

Plain Lies Are Dangerous.

To Make A Precise Scientific Description Of Reality Out Of Words Is Like Trying To Build A Rigid Structure Out Of Pure Quicksilver.

Every Great Man Has A Woman Behind Him ... And Every Great Woman Has Some Man Or Other In Front Of Her, Tripping Her Up.

Very Dangerous Things, Theories.

Dangerous Things

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.

And What Do All The Great Words Come To In The End, But That? I Love You - I Am At Rest With You - I Have Come Home.

Some People's Blameless Lives Are To Blame For A Good Deal.

Double Standard

To Make A Deliberate Falsification For Personal Gain Is The Last, Worst Depth To Which Either Scholar Or Artist Can Descend In Work Or Life.

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 Community Is To Forget The Community And Serve The Work.

The Making Of Miracles To Edification Was As Ardently Admired By Pious Victorians As It Was Sternly Discouraged By Jesus Of Nazareth. Not That The Victorians Were Unique In This Respect. Modern Writers Also Indulge In Edifying Miracles Though They Generally Prefer To Use Them To Procure Unhappy Endings, By Which Piece Of Thaumaturgy They Win The Title Of Realists.

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.

God Was Executed By People Painfully Like Us, In A Society Very Similar To Our Own ... By A Corrupt Church, A Timid Politician, And A Fickle Proletariat Led By Professional Agitators.

But You See, I Can Believe A Thing Without Understanding It. It's All A Matter Of Training.

We Shall Know What Things Are Of Overmastering Importance When They Have Overmastered Us.

He Had The Appeal Of A Very Young Dog Of A Very Large Breed -- A Kind Of Amiable Absurdity.

If Men Will Not Understand The Meaning Of Judgement, They Will Never Come To Understand The Meaning Of Grace.

A Human Being Must Have Occupation If He Or She Is Not To Become A Nuisance To The World.

There's Truth As Far As You Knows It; And There's Truth As Far As You're Asked For It. But They Don't Represent The Whole Truth - Not Necessarily.

As I Grow Older And Older, And Totter Toward The Tomb, I Find That I Care Less And Less Who Goes To Bed With Whom.

It Is Fatal To Let People Suppose That Christianity Is Only A Mode Of Feeling; It Is Vitally Necessary To Insist That It Is First And Foremost A Rational Explanation Of The Universe.

It Is Ridiculous To Take On A Man's Job Just In Order To Be Able To Say That 'a Woman Has Done It - Yah!' The Only Decent Reason For Tackling A Job Is That It Is Your Job And You Want To Do It.

I Think The Most Joyous Thing In Life Is To Loaf Around And Watch Another Bloke Do A Job Of Work. Look How Popular Are The Men Who Dig Up London With Electric Drills. Duke's Son, Cook's Son, Son Of A Hundred Kings, People Will Stand There For Hours On End, Ear Drums Splitting. Why? Simply For The Pleasure Of Being Idle While Watching Other People Work.

How Can I Find The Words? Poets Have Taken Them All And Left Me With Nothing To Say Or Do" "except To Teach Me For The First Time What They Meant.

Every Time A Man Expects, As He Says, His Money To Work For Him, He Is Expecting Other People To Work For Him.

The Popular Mind Has Grown So Confused That It Is No Longer Able To Receive Any Statement Of Fact Except As An Expression Of Personal Feeling.

The Education That We Have So Far Succeeded In Giving To The Bulk Of Our Citizens Has Produced A Generation Of Mental Slatterns.

There Is One Vast Human Experience That Confronts Us So Formidably That We Cannot Pretend To Overlook It. There Is No Solution To Death. There Is No Means Whatever Whereby You Or I, By Taking Thought, Can Solve This Difficulty In Such A Manner That It No Longer Exists.

Human Experience

It's Very Good Of You--" "no, No, Not At All. It's My Hobby. Not Proposing To People, I Don't Mean, But Investigating Things. Well, Cheer-frightfully-ho And All That. And I'll Call Again, If I May." "i Will Give The Footman Orders To Admit You," Said The Prisoner, Gravely, "you Will Always Find Me At Home.

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?

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.

To Complain That Man Measures God By His Own Experience Is A Waste Of Time; Man Measures Everything By His Own Experience; He Has No Other Yardstick.

But Suppose One Doesn't Quite Know Which One Wants To Put First. Suppose," Said Harriet, Falling Back On Words Which Were Not Her Own, "suppose One Is Cursed With Both A Heart And A Brain?" "you Can Usually Tell," Said Miss De Vine, "by Seeing What Kind Of Mistakes You Make. I'm Quite Sure That One Never Makes Fundamental Mistakes About The Thing One Really Wants To Do. Fundamental Mistakes Arise Out Of Lack Of Genuine Interest. In My Opinion, That Is.

[did You] Ever Know A Sincere Emotion To Express Itself In A Subordinate Clause?

A Society In Which Consumption Has To Be Artificially Stimulated In Order To Keep Production Going Is A Society Founded On Trash And Waste, For Such A Society Is A House Built Upon Sand.

What? Sunday Morning In An English Family And No Sausages? God Bless My Soul, What's The World Coming To, Eh?

Time And Trouble Will Tame An Advanced Young Woman, But An Advanced Old Woman Is Uncontrollable By Any Earthly Force.

Uncontrollable Urge

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.

Britain Possesses No Climate, Only Weather.

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.

It Was Left For The Present Age To Endow Covetousness With Glamour On A Big Scale, And To Give It A Title Which It Could Carry Like A Flag. It Occurred To Somebody To Call It Enterprise. From The Moment Of That Happy Inspiration, Covetousness Has Gone Forward And Never Looked Back.

Of Course, There Is Some Truth In Advertising. There's Yeast In Bread, But You Can't Make Bread With Yeast Alone. Truth In Advertising Is Like Leaven, Which A Woman Hid In Three Measures Of Meal. It Provides A Suitable Quantity Of Gas, With Which To Blow Out A Mass Of Crude Misrepresentation Into A Form That The Public Can Swallow.

That You Cannot Have Christian Principles Without Christ Is Becoming Increasingly Clear, Because Their Validity As Principles Depends On Christ's Authority.

Praise God (or Whatever It Is) From (if Direction Exists) Whom (if Personality Exists) All Blessings (if That Word Corresponds To Any Percept Of Objective Reality) Flow (if Heraclitus And Bergson And Einstein Are Correct In Stating That Everything Is More Or Less Flowing About).

Passion's A Good, Stupid Horse That Will Pull The Plough Six Days A Week If You Give Him The Run Of His Heels On Sundays. But Love's A Nervous, Awkward, Over-mastering Brute; If You Can't Rein Him, It's Best To Have No Truck With Him.

Unlike Music Or Poetry Or Painting, Food Rouses No Response In Passionate And Emotional Youth. Only When The Surge Of The Blood Is Quieted Does Gastronomy Come Into Its Own With Philosophy And Theology And The Sterner Delights Of The Mind.

Heaven Deliver Us, What's A Poet? Something That Can't Go To Bed Without Making A Song About It.

For The Sole True End Of Education Is Simply This: To Teach Men How To Learn For Themselves; And Whatever Instruction Fails To Do This Is Effort Spent In Vain.

Well, It Seems Like A Miracle To Be Able To Look Forward-to-to See All The Minutes In Front Of One Come Hopping Along With Something Marvellous In Them, Instead Of Just[pg 295] Saying, Well, That One Didn't Actually Hurt And The Next May Be Quite Bearable If Only Something Beastly Doesn't Come Pouncing Out--

The Keeping Of An Idle Woman Is A Badge Of Superior Social Status.

Variety, Individuality, Peculiarity, Eccentricity And Indeed Crankiness Are Agreeable To The British Mind; They Make Life More Interesting.

To Start With Invention Is The Mark Of The Fertile Mind ... And Leads Later To The Interpretation Of Experience; To Start With The Reproduction Of Experience Is The Infallible Index Of A Barren Invention.

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 Thing You Ever Said." "all Right. I Can Respect That. Only You've Got To Play The Game. Don't Force An Emotional Situation And Then Blame Me For It." "but I Don't Want Any Situation. I Want To Be Left In Peace.

A Passage Is Not Plain English - Still Less Is It Good English - If We Are Obliged To Read It Twice To Find Out What It Means.

It Is Impossible For Human Nature To Believe That Money Is Not There. It Seems So Much More Likely That The Money Is There And Only Needs Bawling For.

Unless We Do Change Our Whole Way Of Thought About Work, I Do Not Think We Shall Ever Escape From The Appalling Squirrel-cage Of Economic Confusion In Which We Have Been Madly Turning For The Last Three Centuries Or So, The Cage In Which We Landed Ourselves By Acquiescing In A Social System Based Upon Envy And Avarice. A Society In Which Consumption Has To Be Artificially Stimulated In Order To Keep Production Going Is A Society Founded On Trash And Waste.

He Was So Crooked, You Could Have Used His Spine For A Safety-pin.

A Woman Fit To Be A Man's Wife Is Too Good To Be His Servant.

She Reflected She Must Be Completely Besotted About Peter, If His Laughter Could Hallow An Aspidistra.

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.

The Artist's Knowledge Of His Own Creative Nature Is Often Unconscious; He Pursues His Mysterious Way Of Life In A Strange Innocence.

Still, It Doesn't Do To Murder People, No Matter How Offensive They May Be.

Learning And Literature Have A Way Of Outlasting The Civilization That Made Them.

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 Great Advantage About Telling The Truth Is That Nobody Ever Believes It.

Forgiveness Is The One Unpardonable Sin.

There Is Also One Excellent Reason Why The Veriest Amateur May Feel Entitled To Have An Opinion About Education. For If We Are Not All Professional Teachers, We Have All, At Some Time Or Other, Been Taught. Even If We Learned Nothing-perhaps In Particular If We Learned Nothing-our Contribution To The Discussion May Have A Potential Value.

The Devil Is A Spiritual Lunatic, But, Like Many Lunatics, He Is Extremely Plausible And Cunning.

[o]ne Can Scarcely Be Frightened Off Writing What One Wants To Write For Fear An Obscure Reviewer Should Patronise One On That Account.

We Cannot Really Look At The Movement Of The Spirit, Just Because It Is The Power By Which We Do The Looking.

Well-bred English People Never Have Imagination.

The Business Of The Artist Is Not To Escape From His Material Medium Or Bully It, But To Serve It; But To Serve It, He Must Love It. If He Does So, He Will Realise That In Its Service Is Perfect Freedom.

Jesus Christ Is The Only God Who Has A Date In History.

It Is As Dangerous For People Unaccustomed To Handling Words And Unacquainted With Their Technique To Tinker About With These Heavily-charged Nuclei Of Emotional Power As It Would Be For Me To Burst Into A Laboratory And Play About With A Powerful Electromagnet Or Other Machine Highly Charged With Electrical Force.

The Recognition Of The Truth That We Get In The Artist's Work Comes To Us As A Revelation Of New Truth. We Did Not Know It Before, But The Moment It Is Shown To Us, We Know That, Somehow Or Other, We Had Always Known It.

Never Think That Wars Are Irrational Catastrophes: They Happen When Wrong Ways Of Thinking And Living Bring About Intolerable Situations ... The Root Causes Of Conflict Are Usually To Be Found In Some Wrong Way Of Life In Which All Parties Have Acquiesced, And For Which Everybody Must, To Some Extent, Bear The Blame.

Make No Mistake About It, The Detective-story Is Part Of The Literature Of Escape, And Not Of Expression.

For We Let Our Young Men And Women Go Out Unarmed In A Day When Armor Was Never So Necessary. By Teaching Them To Read, We Have Left Them At The Mercy Of The Printed Word. By The Invention Of The Film And The Radio, We Have Made Certain That No Aversion To Reading Shall Secure Them From The Incessant Battery Of Words, Words, Words. They Do Not Know What The Words Mean; They Do Not Know How To Ward Them Off Or Blunt Their Edge Or Fling Them Back; They Are Prey To Words In Their Emotions Instead Of Being The Masters Of Them In Their Intellects.

The Heaviest Restriction Upon The Freedom Of Public Opinion Is Not The Official Censorship Of The Press, But The Unofficial Censorship By A Press Which Exists Not So Much To Express Opinion As To Manufacture It.

Advertise, Or Go Under.

Have You Noticed That The Astronomers And Mathematicians Are Much The Most Cheerful People Of The Lot? I Suppose That Perpetually Contemplating Things On So Vast A Scale Makes Them Feel Either That It Doesn't Matter A Hoot Anyway, Or That Anything So Large And Elaborate Must Have Some Sense In It Somewhere.

The First Thing A Principle Does Is Kill Somebody

[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 -- At Least In My Job. The Line I Always Want To Take Is, That There Is The 'point Of View' Of The Reasonably Enlightened Human Brain, And That This Is The Aspect Of The Matter Which I Am Best Fitted To Uphold.

Why? Oh, Well - I Thought You'd Be Rather An Attractive Person To Marry. That's All. I Mean, I Sort Of Took A Fancy To You. I Can't Tell You Why. There's No Rule About It, You Know.

The Christian Faith Is The Most Exciting Drama That Ever Staggered The Imagination Of Man-and The Dogma Is The Drama ... The Plot Pivots Upon A Single Character, And The Whole Action Is The Answer To A Single Central Problem: 'what Think Ye Of Christ?'... He Was Emphatically Not A Dull M An In His Human Lifetime, And If He Was God, There Can Be Nothing Dull About God Either.

We May Argue Eloquently That 'honesty Is The Best Policy' - Unfortunately, The Moment Honesty Is Adopted For The Sake Of Policy It Mysteriously Ceases To Be Honesty.

And Heresy Is, As I Have Tried To Show, Largely The Expression Of Opinion Of The Untutored Average Man, Trying To Grapple With The Problems Of The Universe At The Point Where They Begin To Interfere With His Daily Life And Thought.

Advertising Never Sold A Bad Product Twice.

The One Thing Which Seems To Me Quite Impossible Is To Take Into Consideration The Kind Of Book One Is Expected To Write; Surely One Can Only Write The Book That Is There To Be Written.

Wimsey Stooped For An Empty Sardine-tin Which Lay, Horribly Battered, At His Feet, And Slung It Idly Into The Quag. It Struck The Surface With A Noice Like A Wet Kiss, And Vanished Instantly. With That Instinct Which Prompts One, When Depressed, To Wallow In Every Circumstance Of Gloom, Peter Leaned Sadly Against The Hurdles And Abandoned Himself To A Variety Of Shallow Considerations Upon (1) The Vanity Of Human Wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First Love; (4) The Decay Of Idealism; (5) The Aftermath Of The Great War; (6) Birth-control; And (7) The Fallacy Of Free-will.

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 Vanity. That Sticks. Humiliation. And We've All Got A Sore Spot We Don't Like To Have Touched.

I Am Better Off With Vegetables At The Bottom Of My Garden Than With All The Fairies Of The Midsummer Night's Dream.

If Anybody Ever Marries You, It Will Be For The Pleasure Of Hearing You Talk Piffle

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.

There Certainly Does Seem A Possibility That The Detective Story Will Come To An End, Simply Because The Public Will Have Learnt All The Tricks.

It Is The First Duty Of A Gentleman To Remember In The Morning Who He Went To Bed With The Night Before.

She Suddenly Saw Wimsey In A New Light. She Knew Him To Be Intelligent, Clean, Courteous, Wealthy, Well-read, Amusing And Enamored, But He Had Not So Far Produced In Her That Crushing Sense Of Inferiority Which Leads To Prostration And Hero-worship. But She Now Realized That There Was, After All, Something Godlike About Him. He Could Control A Horse.

I Know What You're Thinking - That Anybody With Proper Sensitive Feelings Would Rather Scrub Floors For A Living. But I Should Scrub Floors Very Badly, And I Write Detective Stories Rather Well. I Don't See Why Proper Feelings Should Prevent Me From Doing My Proper Job.

The Truth And Value Of A Theory Does Not Depend On The Number Of People Who Are Interested In It - Otherwise You Might Compare The Number Of People Who Follow The Predictions Of Astrologers In The Daily Press With Those Who Attend Lectures By Einstein, And Conclude That Astrology Was More Valuable And True Than Physics.

Detective Stories Keep Alive A View Of The World Which Ought To Be True. Of Course People Read Them For Fun ... But Underneath They Feed A Hunger For Justice ... You Offer To Divert Them, And You Show Them By Stealth The Orderly World In Which We Should All Try To Be Living.

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 A Man, We Say, Simply, That He Is Passionately Keen On His Job; If She Is A Woman, We Say She Is A Freak.

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 Before Now." "exactly; Simply Because I Wasn't There." "i Never Thought Of That.

There Are Crimes Which The Law Cannot Reach.

There Is Undoubtedly Something Irritating About The Favorites Of Fortune.

It Seems To Me Quite Disastrous That The Idea Should Have Got About That Christianity Is An Other-worldly, Unreal, Idealistic Kind Of Religion That Suggests That If We Are Good We Shall Be Happy. On The Contrary, It Is Fiercely And Even Harshly Realistic, Insisting That There Are Certain Eternal Achievements That Make Even Happiness Look Like Trash.

The Young Were Always Theoretical; Only The Middle-aged Could Realize The Deadliness Of Principles.

The Best Remedy For A Bruised Heart Is Not, As So Many People Think, Repose Upon A Manly Bosom. Much More Efficacious Are Honest Work, Physical Activity, And The Sudden Acquisition Of Wealth.

I Say, I Don’t Think The Human Frame Is Very Thoughtfully Constructed For This Sleuthhound Business. If One Could Go On All Fours, Or Had Eyes In Ones Knees, It Would Be A Lot More Practical’… ‘what Luck! Here’s A Deep, Damp Ditch On The Other Side, Which I Shall Now Proceed To Fall Into.’ A Slithering Crash Proclaimed That He Had Carried Out His Intention.

Oh, Well, Faint Heart Never Won So Much As A Scrap Of Paper

When Cats Sat Staring Into The Fire They Were Thinking Out Problems.

To Subdue One's Self To One's Own Ends Might Be Dangerous, But To Subdue One's Self To Other People's Ends Was Dust And Ashes. Yet There Were Those, Still More Unhappy, Who Envied Even The Ashy Saltness Of Those Dead Sea Apples.

What Is Repugnant To Every Human Being Is To Be Reckoned Always As A Member Of A Class And Not As An Individual Person.

We've Got To Laugh Or Break Our Hearts In This Damnable World.

People Who Prefer To Believe The Worst Of Others Will Breed War And Religious Persecutions While The World Lasts.

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.

All The Children Seem To Be Coming Out Quite Intelligent, Thank Goodness. It Would Have Been Such A Bore To Be The Mother Of Morons, And It’s An Absolute Toss-up, Isn’t It? If One Could Only Invent Them, Like Characters In Books, It Would Be Much More Satisfactory To A Well-regulated Mind.

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 English Language Has A Deceptive Air Of Simplicity; So Have Some Little Frocks; But They Are Both Not The Kind Of Thing You Can Run Up In Half An Hour With A Machine.

While Time Lasts There Will Always Be A Future, And That Future Will Hold Both Good And Evil, Since The World Is Made To That Mingled Pattern.

If You Want Your Own Way, God Will Let You Have It. Hell Is The Enjoyment Of One's Own Way Forever.

But It Is The Mark Of All Movements, However Well-intentioned, That Their Pioneers Tend, By Much Lashing Of Themselves Into Excitement, To Lose Sight Of The Obvious.

The Doctrine Of Hell Is Not "mediaeval Priestcraft" For Frightening People Into Giving Money To The Church: It Is Christ's Deliberate Judgment On Sin.... We Cannot Repudiate Hell Without Altogether Repudiating Christ.

I Always Have A Quotation For Everything - It Saves Original Thinking.

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