Dorothy L. Sayers quotes - page 3

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:

To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world.

Dorothy L. Sayers

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I gather that he nearly knocked you down, damaged your property, and generally made a nuisance of himself, and that you instantly concluded he must be some relation to me.

Dorothy L. Sayers

He was being about as protective as a can-opener.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.

Dorothy L. Sayers

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.

Dorothy L. Sayers

We've got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world.

Dorothy L. Sayers

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. (, 8 September 1935)

Dorothy L. Sayers

Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?" "So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.

Dorothy L. Sayers

What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

Dorothy L. Sayers

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 another. We can only give and hazard all we have.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Mr. Hankin: ...the biggest obstacle to good advertising is the client.

Dorothy L. Sayers

George Fentiman: What's the damn good of it, Wimsey? A man goes and fights for his country, gets his inside gassed out, and loses his job, and all they give him is the privilege of marching past the Cenotaph once a year and paying four shillings in the pound income-tax.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Somehow or other, and with the best of intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore-and this in the name of one who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which he passed through the world like a flame.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: He dogs my footsteps with the incompetent zeal of fifty Watsons.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: Wherever trouble turns up, there am I at the bottom of it.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: The first thing a principle does - if it really is a principle - is to kill somebody.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Miss de Vine: [In response to Harriet Vane's, "But you say you don't despise those who make some other person their job?"] "Far from despising them, I think they are dangerous."

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: It's my belief most of us would only be too pleased to chuck these community hysterics if the beastly newspapers didn't run it for all it's worth. However, it won't do to say so. (on Remembrance Day observances)

Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey: The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it – that is at the bottom of the ψευδῆ λέγειν ὡς δεῖ.

Dorothy L. Sayers

There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.

Dorothy L. Sayers