Dorothy Sayers Quotes & Sayings

I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Foster never did anything that was not absolutely correct; this, perhaps, was his real weakness, for it meant that he lacked imagination, both in his work and in handling the men under him. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You can always turn a tragedy into a comedy by sitting down. — Dorothy L. Sayers

She was a long-necked, long-backed woman, who disciplined her hair and her children. She was never embarrassed, and her anger, though never permitted to be visible, made itself felt the more. — 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

Miss Climpson's active mind quickly conjured up a picture of the rabbit-fair-haired and a little paunchy, with a habit of saying, "I'll ask the wife." Miss Climpson wondered why Providence saw fit to create such men. For Miss Climpson, men were intended to be masterful, even though wicked or foolish. She was a spinster made and not born- a perfectly womanly woman. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Work is not primarily a thing one does to live but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker's faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The business of the artist is not to escape from his material medium or bully it, but to serve it; but to serve it, he must love it. If he does so, he will realise that in its service is perfect freedom. — Dorothy L. Sayers

He seemed particularly cheerio, you know," said the Hon. Freddy.
"Particularly what?" inquired the Lord High Steward.
"Cheerio, my lord," said Sir Wigmore, with a deprecatory bow.
"I do not know whether that is a dictionary word," said his lordship entering it upon his notes with a meticulous exactness, "but I take it to be synonymous with cheerful."
The Hon. Freddy, appealed to, said he thought he meant more than just cheerful, more merry and bright, you know.
"May we take it that he was in exceptionally lively spirits?" suggested Counsel.
"Take it in any spirit you like," muttered the witness, adding, more happily, "Take a peg of John Begg. — 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

And it's so pretty and secluded," went on Mrs. Digby, "with these glorious rhododendrons. Look how pretty they are, all sprayed with the water
like fairy jewels
and the rustic seat against those dark cypresses at the back. Really Italian. And the scent of the lilac is so marvellous!"
Mr. Spiller knew that the cypresses were, in fact, yews, but he did not correct her. A little ignorance was becoming in a woman. — Dorothy L. Sayers

There is undoubtedly something irritating about the favorites of fortune. — Dorothy L. Sayers

What we make is more important than what we are, particularly if making is our profession. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I say - I don't mind betting this is the most popular thing Campbell ever did. Nothing in life became him like the leaving of it, eh, what? — Dorothy L. Sayers

Why? Oh, well - I thought you'd be rather an attractive person to marry. That's all. I mean, I sort of took a fancy to you. I can't tell you why. There's no rule about it, you know. — Dorothy L. Sayers

She suffered much from the adjacent presence of her daughter-in-law, whose misfortune it was to become disagreeable when she was unhappy
perhaps the heaviest curse that can be laid on man, who is born to sorrow. — 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

Sex is every man's loco spot ... he'll take a disappointment, but not a humiliation. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

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

Jerrykins, or Pickled Gherkins. Lord Peter was not one of those born uncles who delight old nurses by their — Dorothy L. Sayers

To obey orders in this family has been my privilege for the last twenty years--a privilege which has been an unqualified pleasure, except perhaps when connected with the photography of deceased persons in an imperfect state of preservation. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are 'the opposite sex' - (though why 'opposite' I do not know; what is the 'neighbouring sex'?). — Dorothy L. Sayers

The more genuinely creative [the writer] is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of himself — Dorothy L. Sayers

If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram. — 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

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

A continual atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Perhaps you didn't say much about him, mother, but Gerald said lots - dreadful things!'
'Yes,' said the Duchess, 'he said what he thought. The present generation does, you know. To the uninitiated, I admit, dear, it does sound a little rude. — 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

I always said the professional advocate was the most amoral person on the face of the earth. I'm certain of it now. — Dorothy L. Sayers

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought. — Dorothy L. Sayers

It's very inconvenient being a sculptor. It's like playing the double-bass; one's so handicapped by one's baggage. — Dorothy L. Sayers

God wastes nothing - not even sin. The soul that has struggled and come through is enriched by it's experiences, and Grace does not merely blot out the evil past but in the most literal sense "makes it good." — Dorothy L. Sayers

That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

In any case,' I added, 'I don't know that the great-niece is excluded under the Act - I only understand that she may be. In any case, there are still six months before the Act comes into force, and many things may happen before then.' " 'You mean that Auntie may die,' she said, 'but she's — Dorothy L. Sayers

Passion's a good, stupid horse that will pull the plough six days a week if you give him the run of his heels on Sundays. But love's a nervous, awkward, over-mastering brute; if you can't rein him, it's best to have no truck with him. — Dorothy L. Sayers

You needn't try to bully me, young man," said that octogenarian with spirit, "settin' there spoilin' your stomach with them nasty jujubes. — Dorothy L. Sayers

And by the way, my dear,' he said, 'you might just mention to Mrs. Sutton that if she must read the morning paper before I come down, I should be obliged if she would fold it neatly afterwards.'
'What an old fuss-box you are, darling,' said his wife.
Mr. Mummery sighed. He could not explain that it was somehow important that the morning paper should come to him fresh and prim, like a virgin.
Women did not feel these things. ("Suspicion") — Dorothy L. Sayers

I admit it is better fun to punt than be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry. — Dorothy L. Sayers

In every age, art holds up to us the standard pattern of exemplary conduct, and real life does its best to conform. — Dorothy L. Sayers

This effect would be increased by extraneous circumstances producing other familiar physical sensations - night, cold or the rattling of heavy traffic, for instance." "Yes." "Yes. The old wounds are nearly healed, but not quite. The ordinary exercise of your mental faculties has no bad effect. It is only when you excite the injured part of your brain." "Yes, I see." "Yes. You must avoid these occasions. You must learn to be irresponsible, Lord Peter." "My friends say I'm only too irresponsible already." "Very likely. A sensitive nervous temperament often appears so, owing to its mental nimbleness." "Oh! — Dorothy L. Sayers

He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Advertise, or go under. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers
if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I love the way Dorothy Sayers described the wild side of His personality. To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was 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. We have declawed the lion of Judah and made Him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies.9 — Mark Batterson

It is not known why motorists, who sing the joys of the open road, spend so much petrol every week-end grinding their way to Southend and Brighton and Margate, in the stench of each other's exhausts, one hand on the horn and one foot on the brake, their eyes starting from their orbits in the nerve-racking search for cops, corners, blind turnings, and cross-road suicides. — Dorothy L. Sayers

To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door. — Dorothy L. Sayers

She had her image ... and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper - and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Nothing is more vulgar than a careful avoidance of beginning a letter with the first person singular) — Dorothy L. Sayers

_'You shouldn't say thank you for a good review,' said Harriet. 'That would imply that one had done a favour to the author, whereas one has simply done justice to the book.'_ — Dorothy L. Sayers

That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I s'pose you couldn't get 'em to bring it in 'Death by the Visitation of God,' could you, Biggs?' suggested Lord Peter. 'Sort of judgment for wantin' to marry into our family, what? — Dorothy L. Sayers

When service is unto people, the bones can grow weary, the frustration deep. Because, agrees Dorothy Sayers, "whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm-center of trouble. The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains ... You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause ... When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands on always washing the feet of Jesus alone - the bones, they sing joy and the work returns to it's purest state: eucharisteo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness. "The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action" writes Mother Theresa. "If we pray the work ... if we do it to Jesus, if we do it for Jesus, if we do it with Jesus ... that's what makes us content." Deep joy is always in the touching of Christ - in whatever skin He comes to us in. Page 194 — Ann Voskamp

Peter! Were you looking for a horse-shoe?"
"No; I was expecting the horse, but the shoe is a piece of pure, gorgeous luck."
"And observation. I found it."
"You did. And I could kiss you for it. You need not shrink and tremble. I am not going to do it. When I kiss you, it will be an important event
one of those things which stand out among their surroundings like the first time you tasted li-chee. It will not be an unimportant sideshow attached to a detective investigation. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

But if you were investigating a crime," said Lady Swaffham, "you'd have to begin by the usual things, I suppose - finding out what the person had been doing, and who'd been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Lord Peter, "but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin' all sorts of inoffensive people. There's lots of people I'd like to murder, wouldn't you?"

"Heaps," said Lady Swaffham. — Dorothy L. Sayers

When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went up to the University in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number of psychological complications which, while they may interest the psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society. — 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

Theology is the mistress-science, without which the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I didn't mind thinking you were a murderer," said Lady Mary spitefully, "but I do mind you being such an ass. — Dorothy L. Sayers

A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence. — Dorothy L. Sayers

She is a very conscientious person," said Miss Lydgate, "but she has rather an unfortunate knack of making any subject sound dull. It's a great pity, because she is exceptionally sound and dependable. However, that doesn't greatly matter in her present appointment; she holds a librarianship somewhere - Miss — Dorothy L. Sayers

I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Why would you family think about it?"
"Oh, my mother's the only one that counts, and she likes you very much from what she's seen of you."
"So you had me inspected?"
"No-dash ti all, I seem to be saying all the wrong things today. I was absolutely stunned that first day in court, and I rushed off to my mater, who's an absolute dear, and the kind of person who really understands things, and I said, 'Look here! here's the absolutely one and only woman, and she's being put through a simply ghastly awful business and for God's sake come and hold my hand!' You simply don't know how foul it was. — Dorothy L. Sayers

His lordship is in the enjoyment of very low spirits, owing to his inexplicable inability to bend Providence to his own designs. — Dorothy L. Sayers

In the terms in which you set it, the problem is unanswerable; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, those terms do not apply. You have asked the question in a form that is much too limited; the 'solution' must be brought in from outside your sphere of reference altogether. — Dorothy L. Sayers

It is not the business of the church to adapt Christ to men, but men to Christ. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. 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 saltiness of those dead sea apples. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Peter: Oy!
Harriet: Hullo!
Peter: I just wanted to ask whether you'd given any further thought to that suggestion about marrying me.
Harriet (sarcastically) : I suppose you were thinking how delightful it would be to go through life together like this?
Peter: Well, not quite like this. Hand in hand was more my idea.
Harriet: What is that in your hand?
Peter: A dead starfish.
Harriet: Poor fish!
Peter: No ill-feeling, I trust?
Harriet: Oh, dear no. — Dorothy L. Sayers

It is ridiculous to take on a man's job just in order to be able to say that 'a woman has done it - yah!' The only decent reason for tackling a job is that it is your job and you want to do it. — Dorothy L. Sayers

She could have made a much better thing of that, if she had not been afraid of giving herself away. What hampered her was this sense of being in the middle of things, too close to things, pressed upon and bullied by reality. If she could succeed in standing aside from herself she would achieve self-confidence and a better control. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Whereas, up to the present, there is only one known way of getting born, there are endless ways of getting killed. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I think this co-operative scheme is an uncommonly good one. It's much easier to work on someone else's job than one's own - gives one that delightful feelin' of interferin' and bossin' about, combined with the glorious sensation that another fellow is takin' all one's own work off one's hands. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age. — 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

It's not the innocent young things that need gentle handling
it's the ones that have been frightened and hurt. — Dorothy L. Sayers

In 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers provided a detailed analysis of that creative process in The Mind of the Maker. She developed the relevance of the imago Dei for understanding artistic creation in explicitly trinitarian terms. In every act of creation there is a controlling idea (the Father), the energy which incarnates that idea through craftsmanship in some medium (the Son), and the power to create a response in the reader (the Spirit). These three, while separate in identity, are yet one act of creation. So the ancient credal statements about the Trinity are factual claims about the mind of the maker created in his image. Sayers delves into the numerous literary examples, in what is one of the most fascinating accounts ever written both of the nature of literature and of the imago Dei. While some readers may feel she has a tendency to take a good idea too far, The Mind of the Maker remains an indispensable classic of Christian poetics. — Leland Ryken

Jesus Christ is the only God who has a date in history. — 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

No, no, there must be a limit to the baseness even of publishers. — Dorothy L. Sayers

He was being about as protective as a can-opener. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We — 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

To know one's own limitations is the hallmark of competence. — Dorothy L. Sayers

My brother, being an English gentleman, possesses a library in all his houses, though he never opens a book. This is called fidelity to ancient tradition. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression. — Dorothy L. Sayers

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile. — Dorothy L. Sayers

But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"
"You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

There is a difference between fiction and nonfiction deeper than technique or intention. I value both but genuinely believe that fiction can tell a larger truth. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. (The change-ringer's) passion - and it is a passion - finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

The vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity; and the stronger the diversity the more massive the unity. — Dorothy L. Sayers

There's something hypnotic about the word tea. — Dorothy L. Sayers

It was left for the present age to endow Covetousness with glamour on a big scale, and to give it a title which it could carry like a flag. It occurred to somebody to call it Enterprise. From the moment of that happy inspiration, Covetousness has gone forward and never looked back. — Dorothy L. Sayers