Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• [N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Real, Book, Mind

  16 Copy quote

• That you cannot have Christian principles without Christ is becoming increasingly clear, because their validity as principles depends on Christ's authority.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Christian, Becoming, Principles

  6 Copy quote

• Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There's yeast in bread, but you can't make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Blow, Meals, Three

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “Murder Must Advertise”, p.86, Open Road Media

  9 Copy quote

• But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Heart, People, Brain

  "Gaudy Night".

  17 Copy quote

• [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 view is different, and frankly I do not think it is -- at least in my job. The line I always want to take is, that there is the 'point of view' of the reasonably enlightened human brain, and that this is the aspect of the matter which I am best fitted to uphold.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jobs, Thinking, Views

  12 Copy quote

• There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  People, Ordinary, Foam

  DOROTHY L. SAYERS (1963). “STRONG POISON”

  9 Copy quote

• We cannot really look at the movement of the Spirit, just because It is the Power by which we do the looking.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Looks, Movement, Spirit

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2010). “Mind of the Maker”, p.91, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Regret, Men, Brain

  10 Copy quote

• The business of the artist is not to escape from his material medium or bully it, but to serve it; but to serve it, he must love it. If he does so, he will realise that in its service is perfect freedom.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Art, Perfect, Bully

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2010). “Mind of the Maker”, p.53, Bloomsbury Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Character, Details, Facts

  11 Copy quote

• I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Memories, Doe, Gone

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “Gaudy Night”, p.83, Open Road Media

  54 Copy quote

• What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Class, Individual, Members

  "Are Women Human?" by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1938.

  5 Copy quote

• you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Mother, Book, Writing

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2013). “The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death”, p.408, Open Road Media

  19 Copy quote

• the truth and value of a theory does not depend on the number of people who are interested in it - otherwise you might compare the number of people who follow the predictions of astrologers in the daily press with those who attend lectures by Einstein, and conclude that astrology was more valuable and true than physics.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Numbers, Astrology, People

  11 Copy quote

• The education that we have so far succeeded in giving to the bulk of our citizens has produced a generation of mental slatterns.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Giving, Generations, Citizens

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2010). “Mind of the Maker”, p.16, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• I think the most joyous thing in life is to loaf around and watch another bloke do a job of work. Look how popular are the men who dig up London with electric drills. Duke's son, cook's son, son of a hundred kings, people will stand there for hours on end, ear drums splitting. Why? Simply for the pleasure of being idle while watching other people work.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Kings, Jobs, Son

  23 Copy quote

• She couldn't have found anything nastier to say if she had thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Hands, Found, Fortnight

  1937 'Prothalamion'.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Government, Order, Democracy

  7 Copy quote

• Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  People, May, Matter

  11 Copy quote

• There is no solution to death.Life intends to kill us.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Life Death, Solutions

  5 Copy quote

• We may argue eloquently that 'Honesty is the best Policy' - unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Honesty, May, Sake

  6 Copy quote

• There is a universal moral law, as distinct from a moral code, which consists of certain statements of fact about the nature of man, and by behaving in conformity with which, man may enjoy his true freedom.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Men, Law, May

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2010). “Mind of the Maker”, p.7, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  People, Cheerful, Matter

  7 Copy quote

• In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jobs, Work, Men

  8 Copy quote

• To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Men, Complaining, Yardsticks

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2010). “Mind of the Maker”, p.19, Bloomsbury Publishing

  10 Copy quote

Page 4 of 10

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin