Murder Must Advertise Quotes

“Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“So I am a Socialist,” said Ingleby, “but I can’t stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn’t happen.” “If everybody had the same face,” said Bredon, “there’d be no pretty women.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.”

“Ah, yes—but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over—once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands—including you and me.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“My brother, being an English gentleman, possesses a library in all his houses, though he never opens a book. This is called fidelity to ancient tradition.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“You don’t need an argument for buying butter. It’s a natural, human instinct.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Whatever you’re doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you’re buying, pause and buy something different. Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up! Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied. If once you are satisfied, all our wheels will run down.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“I know when I am well off. You had better come up to me.’     ‘You know I can’t.’     ‘Of course you can’t. You can only go down and down.’     ‘Are you trying to insult me?’     ‘Yes, but it’s very difficult.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say 'Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,' then it's got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made 'from pears', without the 'only' the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, 'made with pears', you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you - such are the niceties of our English tongue.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“They had merely discovered that comfortable and well-fed people are constitutionally disinclined for united action of any sort”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“You’ll soon find that the biggest obstacle to good advertising is the client.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“You give me your advice, and stand by ready to rally round with your myrmidons in case there’s any roughhousing.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“It's a curious thing, but people cannot resist anonymous letters. It's like free sample offers. They appeal to all one's lower instincts.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“With five minutes to go, Wimsey watched the first ball of the over come skimming down towards him. It was a beauty. It was jam. He smote it as Saul smote the Philistines. It soared away in a splendid parabola, struck the pavilion roof with a noise like the crack of doom, rattled down the galvanized iron roofing, bounced into the enclosure where the scorers were sitting and broke a bottle of lemonade. The match was won.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Where, Bredon asked himself, did the money come from that was to be spent so variously and so lavishly? If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen? If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease? He did not know. Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion. Phantasmagoria”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Bredon shuddered.
“I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.”
“Ah, yes—but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over—once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands—including you and me.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“To Lord Peter Wimsey, the few weeks of his life spent in unraveling the Problem of the Iron Staircase possessed an odd dreamlike quality, noticeable at the time and still more insistent in retrospect. The very work that engaged him--or, rather the shadowy simulacrum of himself that signed itself on every morning in the name of Death Bredon--wafted him into a sphere of dim platonic archetypes, bearing a scarcely recognizable relationship to anything in the living world. Here those strange entities, the Thrifty Housewife, the Man of Discrimination, the Keen Buyer and the Good Judge, for ever young, for ever handsome, for ever virtuous, economical and inquisitive, moved to and fro upon their complicated orbits....”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Where, Bredon asked himself, did the money come from that was to be spent so variously and so lavishly? If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen? If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, redecorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease? He did not know. Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion. Phantasmagoria--a city of dreadful day, of cruide shapes and colours piled Babel-like in a heaven of harsh cobalt and rocking over a void of bankruptcy--a Cloud Cuckoo-land, peopled by pitiful ghosts, from the Thrifty Housewife, providing a Grand Family Meal for Fourpence with the aid of Dairyfields Butter Beans in Margarine, to the Typist capturing the affections of Prince Charming by a liberal use of Muggin’s Magnolia Face Cream.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“She sat up. ‘The terror induced by forests and darkness,’ said a mocking voice from somewhere over her head, ‘was called by the Ancients, Panic fear, or the fear of the great god Pan. It is interesting to observe that modern progress has not altogether succeeded in banishing it from ill-disciplined minds.’ Dian gazed upwards.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality--except, of course, as regrds his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“I always believe in leaving scope to other people's imagination.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“This place is run like a Government office... Hustle’s not wanted and initiative and curiosity are politely shown the door.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“myrmidons”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“Now, you show our old bird brandy, an’ ’el’ll ’op right out of ’is cage for it same as a Christian.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“wafted him into a sphere of dim platonic archetypes, bearing a scarcely recognizable relationship to anything in the living world. Here those strange entities, the Thrifty Housewife, the Man of Discrimination, the Keen Buyer and the Good Judge, for ever young, for ever handsome, for ever virtuous, economical and inquisitive, moved to and fro upon their complicated orbits,”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“They had merely discovered that comfortable and well-fed people are constitutionally disinclined for united action of any sort—a fact which explains the asinine meekness of the income-tax payer.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over – once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands – including you and me.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“The interview with the cat had been particularly full of appeal. The animal was, it seemed, an illustrious rat-catcher, with many famous deeds to her credit. Not only that, but she had been the first to notice the smell of fire and had, by her anguished and intelligent mewings, attracted the attention of night-watchman number one, who had been in the act of brewing himself a cup of tea when the outbreak took place.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“How do you do?”

“How do you do?” echoed Mr. Ingleby.

They gazed at one another with the faint resentment of two cats at their first meeting.

Mr. Hankin smiled kindly at them both.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise