Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

The mellow bells, soaring and singing in tower and steeple, told of time's flight through an eternity of peace; and Great Tom, tolling his nightly hundred-and-one, called home only the rooks from off Christ Church Meadow…

She resented the way in which he walked in and out of her mind as if it was his own flat.

They cultivated normality till it stood out of them all over in knobs, like the muscles upon professional strong men, and scarcely looked normal at all. And they talked interminably and loudly. From their bouncing mental…

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.''Yes,' said Harriet,…

Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead'still less because one had once liked them very much.

Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face, however difficult it may be.