Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

205 Sourced Quotes

When cats sat staring into the fire they were thinking out problems.

Dorothy L. Sayers
A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.

Dorothy L. Sayers
How true it is that men live for Things and women for People!

Dorothy L. Sayers
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
It seems to me quite disastrous that the idea should have got about that Christianity is an other-worldly, unreal, idealistic kind of religion that suggests that if we are good we shall be happy. On the contrary, it is fiercely and even harshly realistic, insisting that there are certain eternal achievements that make even happiness look like trash.

Dorothy L. Sayers
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
There are times when one is tempted to say that the great, sprawling, lethargic sin of Sloth is the oldest and greatest of the sins and the parent of all the rest.

Dorothy L. Sayers
There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or other, been taught. Even if we learned nothing-perhaps in particular if we learned nothing-our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value.

Dorothy L. Sayers
Well, it seems like a miracle to be able to look forward-to-to see all the minutes in front of one come hopping along with something marvellous in them, instead of just[Pg 295] saying, Well, that one didn't actually hurt and the next may be quite bearable if only something beastly doesn't come pouncing out--

Dorothy L. Sayers
It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe.

Dorothy L. Sayers
To foment grievance and to set men at variance is the trade by which agitators thrive and journalists make money.

Dorothy L. Sayers
On the strength of his literary output alone... any woman of sense would decline to tackle D.H. Lawrence at 1,000 pounds a night.

Dorothy L. Sayers
There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.

Dorothy L. Sayers
The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man-and the dogma is the drama... The plot pivots upon a single character, and the whole action is the answer to a single central problem: 'What think ye of Christ?'... He was emphatically not a dull m an in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either.

Dorothy L. Sayers
To make a precise scientific description of reality out of words is like trying to build a rigid structure out of pure quicksilver.

Dorothy L. Sayers
And heresy is, as I have tried to show, largely the expression of opinion of the untutored average man, trying to grapple with the problems of the universe at the point where they begin to interfere with his daily life and thought.

Dorothy L. Sayers
To start with invention is the mark of the fertile mind... and leads later to the interpretation of experience; to start with the reproduction of experience is the infallible index of a barren invention.

Dorothy L. Sayers
The war has jerked us pretty sharply into consciousness about this slug-a-bed sin of Sloth, and perhaps we need not say too much about it. But two warnings are rather necessary.

Dorothy L. Sayers
To suppress a fact is to publish a falsehood.

Dorothy L. Sayers
"Must have facts," said Lord Peter, "facts. When I was a small boy I always hated facts. Thought of 'em as nasty, hard things, all knobs. Uncompromisin'."

Dorothy L. Sayers
While time lasts there will always be a future, and that future will hold both good and evil, since the world is made to that mingled pattern.

Dorothy L. Sayers
The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists.

Dorothy L. Sayers
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
But you see, I can believe a thing without understanding it. It's all a matter of training.

Dorothy L. Sayers
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