Bebe > Bebe's Quotes

“Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad”
― Christina Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: An Anthology

“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.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

“Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“Even idiots ocasionally speak the truth accidentally.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?

“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.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“[W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“We've got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“My dear child, 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.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness

“He had the appeal of a very young dog of a very large breed -- a kind of amiable absurdity.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“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, Clouds of Witness

“The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. Tin tan din dan bim bam bom bo--tan tin din dan bam bim bo bom--tan dan tin bam din bo bim bom--every bell in her place striking tuneably, hunting up, hunting down, dodging, snapping, laying her blows behind, making her thirds and fourths, working down to lead the dance again. Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells--little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“There’s something hypnotic about the word ‘tea’. I’m asking you to enjoy the beauties of the English countryside; to tell me your adventures and hear mine; to plan a campaign involving the comfort and reputation of two-hundred people; to honor me with your sole presence and to bestow upon me the illusion of paradise, and I speak as though the pre-eminent object of all desire were a pot of boiled water and a plateful of synthetic pastries in Ye Olde Worlde Tudor Tea Shoppe.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“Don't you know that I passionately dote on every chin on his face?”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

“I didn't mind thinking you were a murderer," said Lady Mary spitefully, "but I do mind you being such an ass.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness

“The glass-blower's cat is bompstable,” said Mr. Parker aloud and distinctly.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

“Lord Peter Wimsey stretched himself luxuriously between the sheets provided by the Hotel Meurice.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“All this happened, more or less.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of
warm earth. Suicide weather.”
― Susanna Kaysen

“Like all male creatures Wimsey was a simple soul at bottom.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase

“She resented the way in which he walked in and out of her mind as if it was his own flat.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“I have a peculiar instinct about pubs. I can find one blindfold in a pea-souper with both hands tied behind me.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre