Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industr...

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You ...

The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated—yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most ...

She had her image… and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it...

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

I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”“Probabl...

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always somethin...

You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a less...

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

... I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your lordship's cellar, that, although...

I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn't a sign. Of cou...

Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite P...

The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule,...

But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things...

I give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is Watson, and you need not say...

Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black a...

There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim direc...

Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey ...

She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, w...

At present we have no clear grasp of the principle that every man should do the work for which he is...

Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take ... You don't want...

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

The worst sin-perhaps the only sin- passion can commit is to be joyless.

The only Christian work is good work well done.

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in not...

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

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

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men whe...

In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "...

Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man...

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his j...

We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting t...

I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something abou...

Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.

For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can...

But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.

in the linked arms of Bacchus and Aphrodite.

She reflected she must be completely besotted with Peter, if his laughter could hallow an aspidistra...

He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man)...

How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do""Except to...

Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain;If we perish in the seeking, why, how smal...

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

Lord Peter Wimsey: Facts, Bunter, must have facts. When I was a small boy, I always hated facts. Tho...

The departure of the church-going element had induced a more humanitarian atmosphere.

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point ...

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and...

Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.

What we make is more important than what we are particularly if making is our profession.

The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.

I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable m...

Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often-and a human being must have occupation...

Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?""Yes, of course it is. At least, when you g...

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the who...

What'll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?" demanded Miss Ha

For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves and what...

I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of...

People who make some other person part of their job are dangerous.

A continued atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own.

I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undon...

this is the weakness of most 'edifying' or 'propaganda' literature. There is no diversity...You cann...

The planet's tyrant, dotard Death, had held his gray mirror before them for a moment and shown them ...

The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make thin...

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it.

What women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle. It is true that most women...

That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no...

That this is really the case was made plain to me by the questions asked me, mostly by young men, ab...

And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of pers...

It is arguable that when Humanists, "Shook off," as people say, "the trammels of religion," and disc...

Philip wasn't the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I di...

Why would you family think about it?""Oh, my mother's the only one that counts, and she likes you ve...

(One character on another:)"Don't you know that I passionately dote on every chin on his face?

Don't be so damned discouraging," said Wimsey. "I have already carefully explained to you that this ...

Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about ...

Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper

There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ord...

Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of c...

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

Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey's judgment, and, in spite of his own interior ...

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either schola...

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either schola...

Forgiveness does not wipe away the consequences of the sin. The consequences are borne by somebody.

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman. But an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by a...

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

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher...

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you...

Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.

The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the t...

If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we ...

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- o...

See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental ...

[W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insistin...

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer sh...

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the...

[On marriage and permanent attach

[T]he more clamour we make about 'the women's point of view', the more we rub it into people that th...

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one ...

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I ...

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher...

The more genuinely creative [the writer] is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance...

The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly ...