The Nine Tailors Quotes

“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

“The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. (The change-ringer's) passion - and it is a passion - finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“I took the liberty of ascertaining as much beforehand, my lord."
"Of course you did, Bunter. You always ascertain everything.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“I assure your lordship that for the first time in my existence I regret that I have made no practical study of campanology."
I am always so delighted to find that there are things you cannot do.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“The banks of the Thirty-Foot held, but the swollen Wale, receiving the full force of the Upper Waters and the spring tide, gave at every point. Before the cars reached St. Paul, the flood was rising and pursuing them. Wimsey's car--the last to start--was submerged to the axles. They fled through the dusk, and behind and on their left, the great silver sheet of water spread and spread.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“The art of change ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. To the musical Belgian, for example, it appears that the proper thing to do with a carefully tuned ring of bells is to play a tune upon it. By the English campanologist, the playing of tunes is considered to be a childish game, only fit for foreigners; the proper use of bells is to work out mathematical permutations and combinations.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“He spoke in a series of gruff barks, and held himself so rigidly that if he had swallowed a poker it could only have produced unseemly curves and flexions in his figure.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Five minutes' practice before the glass every day, and you will soon acquire that vacant look so desirable for all rogues, detectives and Government officials.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Bells are like cats and mirrors—they’re always queer, and it doesn’t do to think too much about them.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Yes—but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won’t understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they’ll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless, they’ll be quite wrong both times—but they won’t ever know it, and you won’t know it at first, and it’ll worry you.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Thank God!’ said Wimsey. ‘Where there is a church, there is civilisation.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“The untoward incident cast a certain gloom over the breakfast table, though Wimsey, who felt his sides clapping together like an empty portmanteau, was only too happy to devour his eggs and bacon and coffee in peace.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“The main lights of its eight great windows were darkened throughout their height; only through the slender panelled tracery above the slanting louvers the sunlight dripped rare and chill, striping the heavy beams of the bell-cage with bars and splashes of pallid gold, and making a curious fantastic patterning on the spokes and rims of the wheels. The bells, with mute black mouths gaping downwards, brooded in their ancient places.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Nine Tailors Make a Man.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“Perfectly. I’m a terrific success at pottering round asking sloppy questions. And I can put away quite a lot of beer in a good cause.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“The fenman gazed at Wimsey with a slow pity for his bird-witted feebleness of mind.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“Poor little Hilary Thorpe wasn’t in church,’ she observed. ‘Such a nice child. I should have liked you to see her. But she’s quite prostrated, poor child, so Mrs Gates tells me. And you know, the village people do stare so at anybody who’s in trouble and they will want to talk and condole. They mean well, but it’s a terrible ordeal.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“CHANGES RUNG ON AN OLD THEME IN TWO SHORT TOUCHES AND TWO FULL PEALS”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“When I was a lad, there wasn’t none of this myster’ousness about. Everything was straightforward an’ proper. But ever since eddication come in, it’s been nothing but puzzlement, and fillin’ up forms and ’ospital papers and sustificates and such, before you can get even as much as your Lord George pension.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“Oysters have beards, but they don’t wag them.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells. It seems strange that a generation which tolerates the uproar of the internal combustion engine and the wailing of the jazz band should be so sensitive to the one loud noise that is made to the glory of God. England, alone in the world,”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“the noiseless tenor of our way,”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Man proposes and God disposes.”
― Sayers Dorothy L, The Nine Tailors

“What can't be cured must be endured.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Well, it is the law, my lord,’ replied Mr Blundell, ‘and it’s not my place to argue about it.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors

“Bells, it may be noted, like ships and kittens, have a way of being female, whatever names they are given.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“Not in the least, Mrs. Venables. Nothing would please me more than to ring bells all day and all night. I am not tired at all. I really don’t need rest. I would far rather ring bells. The only thing that worries me is whether I shall be able to get through the peal without making stupid mistakes.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“It will come back to you,” cried the Rector, feverishly. “It will come back. Half an hour with the handbells——”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

“you were speaking just now with a good deal of feeling about Treble Bob—you are not, yourself, by any chance, a ringer?” “Well,” said Wimsey, “I used at one time to pull quite a pretty rope. But whether, at this time of day——”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors