Dorothy L. Sayers - People Quotes

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None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

Dorothy L. Sayers
The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment.

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
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
How true it is that men live for Things and women for People!

Dorothy L. Sayers
God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.

Dorothy L. Sayers
I know what an Act to make things simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don't understand it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a law-suit to disentangle it.

Dorothy L. Sayers
I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.

Dorothy L. Sayers
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
The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.

Dorothy L. Sayers
It is as dangerous for people unaccustomed to handling words and unacquainted with their technique to tinker about with these heavily-charged nuclei of emotional power as it would be for me to burst into a laboratory and play about with a powerful electromagnet or other machine highly charged with electrical force.

Dorothy L. Sayers
Well-bred English people never have imagination...

Dorothy L. Sayers
Don't be so damned discouraging," said Wimsey. "I have already carefully explained to you that this time I am investigating this business. Anybody would think you had no confidence in me." "People have been wrongly condemned before now." "Exactly; simply because I wasn't there." "I never thought of that.

Dorothy L. Sayers
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.

Dorothy L. Sayers
Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.

Dorothy L. Sayers
What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

Dorothy L. Sayers
We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served.

Dorothy L. Sayers
If it ever occurs to people to value the honor of the mind equally with the honor of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.

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

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

Dorothy L. Sayers
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
The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore — on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium.

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
If people will bring dynamite into a powder factory, they must expect explosions.

Dorothy L. Sayers
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