Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

Anythin’ wrong leaves a kind of impression on the eye; brain trots along afterwards with the warnin’.

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them 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 prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

What is the use of acquiring one’s heart’s desire if one cannot handle and gloat over it, show it to one’s friends, and gather an anthology of envy and admiration?

Perhaps [the critics are right and] the drama is played out now and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world’s history those words might have been said with complete conviction, and that was on the eve of the Resurrection.

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

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed … or find a still greater man to marry her. … The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.

What? Sunday morning in an English family and no sausages? God bless my soul, what’s the world coming to, eh?

The first thing a principle does is kill somebody

It’s very inconvenient being a sculptor. It’s like playing the double-bass; one’s so handicapped by one’s baggage.

And then, at night, the lit lamp and the drawn curtain, with the flutter of the turned page and soft scrape of pen on paper the only sounds to break the silence between quarter- and quarter-chime.

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them.

I often think when a man’s once past a certain age, the older he grows the tougher he gets, and women the same or more so.