Gaudy Night Quotes
Gaudy Night is one of my favorite mystery novels. Every time I read it, I find something else that speaks to me. Here are some of my favorite quotes, mostly for raincitygirl.
"Well, there," said Miss Schuster-Slatt, "I'm afraid I've been very, very tactless. My mother always said to me, 'Sadie, you're the most tactless girl I ever had the bad luck to meet.' But I am enthusiastic. I get carried away. I don't stop to think. I'm just the same with my work. I don't consider my own feelings; I don't consider other people's feelings. I just wade right in and ask for what I want, and I mostly get it."
After which, Miss Schuster-Slatt, with more sensitive feeling than one might have credited her with, carried the conversation triumphantly away to the subject of her own work, which turned out to have something to do with the sterilization of the unfit, and the encouragement of matrimony among the intelligentsia.
***
Harriet: "I know what you're thinking--that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job."
***
Finally the Bursar was heard to quote:
"God made the integers; all else is the work of man."
"Oh, bother!" cried the Dean. "Do let's keep mathematics out of it. And physics. I cannot cope with them."
"Who mentioned Planck's constant a little time ago?"
"I did, and I'm sorry for it. I call it a revolting little object."
***
Miss de Vine: "Detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it loveable, either in themselves or in others. If you ever find a person who likes you in spite of it -- still more, because of it -- that liking has very great value, because it is perfectly sincere, and because, with that person, you will never need to be anything but sincere yourself."
"That is probably very true," said Harriet, "but what makes you say it?"
"Not any desire to offend you, believe me. But I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them."
***
The Dean: "Of course men don't like having their poor little noses put out of joint -- who does? I think it's perfectly noble of them to let us come trampling over their University at all, bless their hearts. They've been used to being lords and masters for hundreds of years and they want a bit of time to get used to the change. Why, it takes a man months and months to reconcile himself to a new hat. And just when you're preparing to send it to the jumble sale, he says, 'That's a rather nice hat you've got on, where did you get it?' And you say, 'My dear Henry, it's the one I had last year and you said made me look like an organ-grinder's monkey.' My brother-in-law says that every time, and it does make my sister so wild."
***
One First of April, the question had arrived from Paris in a single Latin sentence, starting off dispiritedly. "Num...?" -- a particle which notoriously "expects the answer No." Harriet, rummaging the Grammar book for "polite negatives," replied, still more briefly, "Benigne."
***
Miss Burrows: "The trouble is," said the Librarian, "that everybody sneers at restrictions and demands freedom, till something annoying happens; then they demand angrily what has become of the discipline."
***
Peter, of Saint-George: I gather that he nearly knocked you down, damaged your property and generally made a nuisance of himself, and that you instantly concluded he must be some relation to me.
***
Harriet could find nothing to say to him. She had fought him for five years, and found out nothing but his strength; now, within half an hour, he had exposed all his weaknesses, one after the other.
***
Mr. Peake, of Lord Peter: "The Americans mostly said, 'My, but isn't he just the perfect English aristocrat!' but some of them said, 'Does he need that glass in his eye or is it just part of the costoom?'"
***
When at length Miss Schuster-Slatt removed herself and her party, the treacherous water wafted back her shrill voice from afar:
"Well, girls! Didn't I tell you he was just the perfect English aristocrat?"
At which point the much-tried Wimsey lay down among the tea-cups and became hysterical.
"Well, there," said Miss Schuster-Slatt, "I'm afraid I've been very, very tactless. My mother always said to me, 'Sadie, you're the most tactless girl I ever had the bad luck to meet.' But I am enthusiastic. I get carried away. I don't stop to think. I'm just the same with my work. I don't consider my own feelings; I don't consider other people's feelings. I just wade right in and ask for what I want, and I mostly get it."
After which, Miss Schuster-Slatt, with more sensitive feeling than one might have credited her with, carried the conversation triumphantly away to the subject of her own work, which turned out to have something to do with the sterilization of the unfit, and the encouragement of matrimony among the intelligentsia.
***
Harriet: "I know what you're thinking--that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job."
***
Finally the Bursar was heard to quote:
"God made the integers; all else is the work of man."
"Oh, bother!" cried the Dean. "Do let's keep mathematics out of it. And physics. I cannot cope with them."
"Who mentioned Planck's constant a little time ago?"
"I did, and I'm sorry for it. I call it a revolting little object."
***
Miss de Vine: "Detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it loveable, either in themselves or in others. If you ever find a person who likes you in spite of it -- still more, because of it -- that liking has very great value, because it is perfectly sincere, and because, with that person, you will never need to be anything but sincere yourself."
"That is probably very true," said Harriet, "but what makes you say it?"
"Not any desire to offend you, believe me. But I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them."
***
The Dean: "Of course men don't like having their poor little noses put out of joint -- who does? I think it's perfectly noble of them to let us come trampling over their University at all, bless their hearts. They've been used to being lords and masters for hundreds of years and they want a bit of time to get used to the change. Why, it takes a man months and months to reconcile himself to a new hat. And just when you're preparing to send it to the jumble sale, he says, 'That's a rather nice hat you've got on, where did you get it?' And you say, 'My dear Henry, it's the one I had last year and you said made me look like an organ-grinder's monkey.' My brother-in-law says that every time, and it does make my sister so wild."
***
One First of April, the question had arrived from Paris in a single Latin sentence, starting off dispiritedly. "Num...?" -- a particle which notoriously "expects the answer No." Harriet, rummaging the Grammar book for "polite negatives," replied, still more briefly, "Benigne."
***
Miss Burrows: "The trouble is," said the Librarian, "that everybody sneers at restrictions and demands freedom, till something annoying happens; then they demand angrily what has become of the discipline."
***
Peter, of Saint-George: I gather that he nearly knocked you down, damaged your property and generally made a nuisance of himself, and that you instantly concluded he must be some relation to me.
***
Harriet could find nothing to say to him. She had fought him for five years, and found out nothing but his strength; now, within half an hour, he had exposed all his weaknesses, one after the other.
***
Mr. Peake, of Lord Peter: "The Americans mostly said, 'My, but isn't he just the perfect English aristocrat!' but some of them said, 'Does he need that glass in his eye or is it just part of the costoom?'"
***
When at length Miss Schuster-Slatt removed herself and her party, the treacherous water wafted back her shrill voice from afar:
"Well, girls! Didn't I tell you he was just the perfect English aristocrat?"
At which point the much-tried Wimsey lay down among the tea-cups and became hysterical.