Dorothy L. Sayers quotes

Dorothy L. Sayers was a renowned English writer and scholar, celebrated for her detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In addition to her fiction work, she was an accomplished playwright, essayist, and a respected translator of Dante’s "Divine Comedy." She made significant contributions to both literature and Christian thought. Here are 91 of her quotes:

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking.

Dorothy L. Sayers

The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.

Dorothy L. Sayers

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.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Bunter: My old mother always used to say, my lord, that facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, they generally run away.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Books . . . are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Dorothy L. Sayers

What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?...God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.

Dorothy L. Sayers

If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject.

Dorothy L. Sayers

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: 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

Lord Peter Wimsey: The worst sin - perhaps the only sin - passion can commit, is to be joyless.

Dorothy L. Sayers

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

Dorothy L. Sayers

Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain; If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death!

Dorothy L. Sayers

Honoria Lucasta, Dowager Duchess of Denver: It's so much better to do things neatly and properly, even stupid things.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Do you know how to pick a lock?" "Not in the least, I'm afraid." "I often wonder what we go to school for," said Wimsey.

Dorothy L. Sayers

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: Wait a second... I'm not sure that you haven't said something useful and important. Lady Mary Wimsey: Everything I say is useful and important.

Dorothy L. Sayers