Busman's Honeymoon Quotes

“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

“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

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

“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 it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

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

“Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“She couldn't have found anything nastier to say if she had thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
― Dorothy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“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, somewhat drily: "No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Experience has taught me," said Peter (...) "that no situation finds Bunter unprepared. That he should have procured The Times this morning by the simple expedient of asking the milkman to request the postmistress to telephone to Broxford and have it handed to the 'bus-conductor to be dropped at the post-office and brought up by the little girl who delivers the telegrams is a trifling example of his resourceful energy.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“I like to crawl away and hide in a corner."
"Well," he said, with a transitory gleam of himself, "you're my corner and I've come to hide.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“She reflected she must be completely besotted with Peter, if his laughter could hallow an aspidistra.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Even if it is the twilight of the world, before night falls I will sleep in your arms.’ . . .”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“I've hated almost everything that ever happened to me, but I knew all the time it was just things that were wrong, not everything. Even when I felt most awful I never thought of killing myself or wanting to die - only of somehow getting out of the mess and starting again.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“It has been said, by myself and others, that a love-interest is only an intrusion upon a detective story. But to the characters involved, the detective-interest might well seem an irritating intrusion upon their love-story.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“What was that you called me?’ ‘Oh, Peter – how absurd! I wasn’t thinking.’ ‘What did you call me?’ ‘My lord!’ ‘The last two words in the language I ever expected to get a kick out of. One never values a thing till one’s earned it, does one? Listen, heart’s lady – before I’ve done I mean to be king and emperor.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Wonder whether Mussolini's mother spanked him too much or too little--you never know, these psychological days. Can distinctly remember spanking Peter, but it doesn't seem to have warped him much, so psychologists very likely all wrong.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“My lord, there is an individual—” “Oh, send him away. I can’t stand any more individuals.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Harriet came round this morning to show me her ring – big solitaire ruby – old Abrahams had it cut and set specially to instructions. Poor H. laughed at herself, because when Peter gave it to her yesterday she was looking at him and ten minutes afterwards, when challenged, couldn’t even tell him the colour of the stone. Said she was afraid she never would learn to behave like other people, but Peter had only said it was the first time his features had ever been prized above rubies. Peter joined us at lunch – also Helen, who demanded to see the ring, and said sharply, ‘Good Heavens! I hope it’s insured.’ To do her justice, I can’t see that she could have found anything nastier to say if she’d thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Now, as in Tullia’s tomb one lamp burnt clear        Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,        May these love-lamps we here enshrine In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine.        Fire ever doth aspire, And makes all like itself, turns all to fire, But ends in ashes; which these cannot do, For none of these is fuel, but fire too. This is joy’s bonfire, then, where love’s strong arts Make of so noble individual parts One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts. JOHN DONNE: Eclogue for the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“His lordship is in the enjoyment of very low spirits, owing to his inexplicable inability to bend Providence to his own designs.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Foster never did anything that was not absolutely correct; this, perhaps, was his real weakness, for it meant that he lacked imagination, both in his work and in handling the men under him.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“May I express the hope that the present union may happily exemplify that which we find in a first-class port—strength of body fortified by a first-class spirit and mellowing through many years to a noble maturity. My lord and my lady—your very good health!”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“But that's men all over. They want the thing done and then, of course, they don't like the consequences. Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Harriet was angry, and her face showed it. Men; when they got together they were all alike--even Peter. For a moment he and Kirk stood together on the far side of a chasm, and she hated them both.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Her faculty for hitting the right nail on the head is almost miraculous – especially as all her blows have the air of being delivered at random. Housekeeping!”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“I love you.’ ‘Bravely said – though I had to screw it out of you like a cork out of a bottle. Why should that phrase be so difficult? I – personal pronoun, subjective case; L – O – V – E, love, verb, active, meaning – Well, on Mr Squeers’s principle, go to bed and work it out.’  ”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Possessiveness isn’t unprecedented.’ ‘On the contrary – it’s as common as mud. But to recognise it in one’s self and chuck it overboard is – unusual. If you want to be a normal person, my girl, you should let it rip and give yourself and everybody else hell with it. And you should call it something else – devotion or self-sacrifice and that sort of thing. If you go on behaving with all this reason and generosity, everybody will think we don’t give a damn for one another.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“Yet no woman had ever so stirred his blood; she had only to look or speak to make the very bones shake in his body.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“I wanted it all to be wonderful for you.’ She waited for him to find his own answer to this, which he did with disarming swiftness. ‘That’s vanity, I suppose. Take pen and ink and write it down. His lordship is in the enjoyment of very low spirits, owing to his inexplicable inability to bend Providence to his own designs.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon