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Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1) QUOTES

Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1) QUOTES

1 " The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

2 " I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn't a sign. Of course, if this were a detective story, there'd have been a convenient shower exactly an hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and came to the jolly conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might have done it. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

3 " But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things, I suppose — finding out what the person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”

“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

4 " You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

5 " Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediæval painting "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

6 " I give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is Watson, and you need not say what you were just going to say, because I admit it all. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

7 " The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said:

"D'you like your job?"

The detective considered the question, and replied:

"Yes—yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it quite well—not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the mark and not get slack. And there's a future to it. Yes, I like it. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," said Peter. "It's a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it—up to a point. If it was all on paper I'd enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job—when one doesn't know any of the people and it's just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don't seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin' in, since I don't have to make my livin' by it. And I feel as if I oughtn't ever to find it amusin'. But I do. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

8 " Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

9 " I say, Parker, these are funny cases, ain't they? Every line of inquiry seems to peter out. It's awfully exciting up to a point, you know, and then nothing comes of it. It's like rivers getting lost in the sand. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

10 " ... I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your lordship's cellar, that, although I was obliged to drink a somewhat large quantity both of the Cockburn '68 and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no headache or other ill effects this morning.

Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit from the country air, and that the little information I have been able to obtain will prove satisfactory, I remain,

With respectful duty to all the family, their ladyships,

Obediently yours,

MERVYN BUNTER.

　
"Y'know," said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself, "I sometimes think Mervyn Bunter's pullin' my leg. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

11 " Well, it’s no good jumping at conclusions.”
“Jump? You don’t even crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

12 " Even idiots ocasionally speak the truth accidentally. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

13 " Well, it's no good jumping at conclusions."

"Jump? You don't even crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion. I believe if you caught the cat with her head in the cream-jug you'd say it was conceivable that the jug was empty when she got there. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

14 " . . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

15 " I always think that the franker you are with people, the more you’re likely to deceive ’em; so unused is the modern world to the open hand and the guileless heart, "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

16 " There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

17 " One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers," said Lady Swaffham. "Like dramatists, you know--so much easier in Shakespeare's time, wasn't it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I'm sure if I'd been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I'd have said: 'Ods bodikins! There's that girl again! "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

18 " Bunter!”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Her Grace tells me that a respectable Battersea architect has discovered a dead man in his bath.”

“Indeed, my lord? That's very gratifying.”

“Very, Bunter. Your choice of words is unerring. I wish Eton and Balliol had done as much for me... "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

19 " You needn't try to bully me, young man," said that octogenarian with spirit, "settin' there spoilin' your stomach with them nasty jujubes. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

20 " Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes," or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.
'I am an amateur,' said Lord Peter "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)