Dorothy L. Sayers

Quotes

• “[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the ...”
• “What women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle. It is true that most women care nothing about ...”
• “[T]he more clamour we make about 'the women's point of view', the more we rub it into people that the women's point of v...”
• “You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a lesson to him," said Mis...”
• “Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions,...”
• “The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus...”
• “She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing an...”
• “She had her image… and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the me...”
• “It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I...”
• “In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for noth...”
• “I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of det...”
• “He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): "Surely it is poss...”
• “The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated—yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all hum...”
• “And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him...”
• “Perhaps [the critics are right and] the drama is played out now and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is iron...”
• “You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute ...”
• “In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sak...”
• “I sleuth, you know. For a hobby. Harmless outlet for natural inquisitiveness, don't you see, which might otherwise strik...”
• “Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey's judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt s...”
• “Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever be...”
• “Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?""Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead ri...”
• “See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ...”
• “There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances ...”
• “[W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howl...”
• “There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the c...”
• “Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors w...”
• “Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to sa...”
• “What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl an...”
• “Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or th...”
• “I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”“Probably not; though there ...”
• “We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only ...”
• “The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write...”
• “…After all, it isn't really difficult to write books. Especially if you either write a rotten story in good English or a...”
• “It will be sent that, although the writer's love is verily a jealous love, it is a jealousy for and not of his creatures...”
• “I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what th...”
• “Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothin...”
• “I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ough...”
• “this is the weakness of most 'edifying' or 'propaganda' literature. There is no diversity...You cannot, in fact, give Go...”
• “Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about commercial arsenic? ...”
• “For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can't possess one anoth...”
• “To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can desc...”
• “For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves and whatever instruction fai...”
• “The more genuinely creative [the writer] is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance with its own nature...”
• “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 ...”
• “Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often-and a human being must have occupation if he or she is not...”
• “How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do""Except to teach me for the fi...”
• “I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot th...”
• “That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist woul...”
• “[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one o...”
• “To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can desc...”