A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.

Birth is beastly - and death - and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful suprème de sole, with the caviare in boats, and the croûtons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets - I could cry. But there it is, don't you know.

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

If men will not understand the meaning of judgement, they will never come to understand the meaning of grace.

The ideal of a perfectly functioning democracy is one person, one vote; the ideal of a perfectly functioning market is one dollar, one vote.It's a hoary superstition that democratically elected governments invariably function as instruments of the collective will.A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.