I have never yet heard any middle-aged man or woman who worked with his or her brains express any regret for the passing of youth.

But to Lord Peter the world presented itself as an entertaining labyrinth of side-issues

A passage is not plain English - still less is it good English - if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means.

There's truth as far as you knows it; and there's truth as far as you're asked for it. But they don't represent the whole truth - not necessarily.

He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin.

There are crimes which the Law cannot reach.

To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.