The Five Red Herrings Quotes

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

“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.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“True,’ replied Wimsey. ‘As G. K. C. says, “I’d rather be alive than not”.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“Oh! are you detecting now?’ ‘Like anything. If you could take the top of my head off, you would see the wheels whizzing round.’ ‘I see. You’re not detecting me, I hope.’ ‘Everybody always hopes that.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a hundred kings – people will stand there for hours on end, with their ear-drums splitting – why? Simply for the pleasure of being idle while other people work.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“The fisherman-painter has the best of the bargain as far as the weather goes, for the weather that is too bright for the trout deluges his hills and his sea with floods of radiant colour; the rain that interrupts picture-making puts water into the rivers and the lochs and sends him hopefully forth with rod and creel; while on cold dull days, when there is neither purple on the hills nor fly on the river, he can join a friendly party in a cosy bar and exchange information about Cardinals and March Browns, and practise making intricate knots in gut.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Five Red Herrings

“He couldn’t know how inconvenient he was going to be. He “maun ha’ gotten a rare fricht,” as the man in Ian Hay’s book”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“G. K. Chesterton says,’ put in Wimsey, ‘that most people with a very well-defined style write at times what looks like bad parodies of themselves. He mentions Swinburne, for instance – that bit about “From the lilies and languors of virtue to the raptures and roses of vice.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“I’m sorry,’ said Wimsey. ‘It fascinates me. I think the most joyous thing in life is to loaf round and watch another bloke doing a job of work.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“To her, the beauty of an ordered life was more than a mere phrase; it was a dogma to be preached, a cult to be practised with passion and concentration.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“They brought it in manslaughter, with a strong recommendation to mercy, on the ground that Campbell was undoubtedly looking for trouble, and the beard of Samson was not sacrificed altogether in vain.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“To boast loudly in public of one’s own country seemed to him indecent – like enlarging on the physical perfections of one’s own wife in a smoking room.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Five Red Herrings

“In my experience, the older a medical man gets, the less willing he is to make ex cathedra pronouncements, and the more he learns that Nature has her own way of confounding self-confident prophets.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“What's that, mister?"
"That's the green for the gentleman's coat.
No--don't pinch it, or you'll get it all over you.
Yes, you can put the cap on.
Yes, that's to keep it from drying up.
Yes, put it back in the box....
That's yellow. No, I know there isn't any yellow in the picture, but I want it to mix with the green to make it brighter. You'll see.
Don't forget the cap.
What? Oh, anywhere in the box.
White--yes, it's a big tube, isn't it? You see, you have to put a little white into most of the colours--why? Well, they wouldn't come right without it. You'll see when I do the sky.
What's that? You want the dog made white all over? No, I can't make it a picture of Scruggs. Why not? Well, Scruggs isn't the right sort of dog to take out shooting. Well, he's not, that's why. This has got to be a retriever. All right, well, I'll put in a liver-and-white spaniel. Oh, well, it's rather a pretty dog with long ears. Yes, I daresay it is like Colonel Amery's. No, I don't know Colonel Amery.
Did you put the cap on that white paint? Dash it! if you go losing things like that I'll send you back to Mother and she'll spank you.
What? Well, the gentleman has a green coat because he's a gamekeeper. Possibly Colonel Amery's gamekeeper doesn't, but this one does. No, I don't know why gamekeepers wear green coats--to keep them warm, I expect.
No, I haven't got any brown paint same as that tree-trunk. I get that by mixing other colours. No, I've got all the colours I want now. You can put 'em away and shut the box.
Yes, I can tell pretty well how much I want before I start.
That's called a palette knife. No, it isn't meant to be sharp. It's meant for cleaning your palette and so on. Some people use a knife to paint with. Yes, it's nice and wiggly, but it won't stand too much of that kind of treatment, my lad. Yes, of course you can paint with a knife if you want to. You can paint with your fingers if it comes to that. No, I shouldn't advise you to try.
Yes, well, it makes a rougher kind of surface, all blobs and chunks of paint. All right, I'll show you presently. Yes, I'm going to begin with the sky. Why? Well, why do you think? Yes, because it's at the top. Yes, of course that blue's too dark, but I'm going to put some white in it. Yes, and some green. You didn't know there was any green in the sky? Well, there is. And sometimes there's purple and pink too. No, I'm not going to paint a purple and pink sky. The gentleman and the dogs have only just started out. It's morning in this picture.
Yes, I know, on the other side they're coming home with a lot of birds and things. I'll put a pink and purple sunset into that if you're good and don't ask too many questions.
No, be a good girl and don't joggle my arm. Oh, Lord!”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“I am ready,’ said Gilda Farren, ‘to forgive—’ ‘Never do that,’ said Wimsey. ‘Forgiveness is the one unpardonable sin.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“You know,’ he said. ‘I rather liked Ferguson, and I couldn’t stick Campbell at any price. I rather wish—’ ‘Can’t be helped, Wimsey,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Murder is murder, you know.’ ‘Not always,’ said Wimsey.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“What a shocking set of crooks these English servants are! Not even murder will turn them from their feudal devotion to the man who pays!”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“One of these days you’ll go too far, and somebody will murder you.' 'I shouldn’t be in the least surprised,' said Lord Peter, pleasantly.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“There are large and stately studios, panelled and high, in strong stone houses filled with gleaming brass and polished oak. There are workaday studios – summer perching-places rather than settled homes – where a good north light and a litter of brushes and canvas form the whole of the artistic stock-in-trade. There are little homely studios, gay with blue and red and yellow curtains and odd scraps of pottery, tucked away down narrow closes and adorned with gardens, where old-fashioned flowers riot in the rich and friendly soil. There are studios that are simply and solely barns, made beautiful by ample proportions and high-pitched rafters, and habitable by the addition of a tortoise stove and a gas-ring. There are artists who have large families and keep domestics in cap and apron; artists who engage rooms, and are taken care of by landladies; artists who live in couples or alone, with a woman who comes in to clean; artists who live hermit-like and do their own charing. There are painters in oils, painters in water-colours, painters in pastel, etchers and illustrators, workers in metal; artists of every variety, having this one thing in common – that they take their work seriously and have no time for amateurs.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Five Red Herrings