110+ Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes On Education, Friendship And World

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a British author, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. She is also known for her plays and essays about Christian theology and the detective novel genre. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers on education, life, love.

Top 10 Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

1. Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject.
2. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
3. What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?...God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.
4. Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
5. 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.
6. The popular mind has grown so confused that it is no longer able to receive any statement of fact except as an expression of personal feeling.
7. Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.
8. I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home.
9. 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.
10. How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do" "Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.

Dorothy L. Sayers Short Quotes

• A continual atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own.
• Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something.
• To know one's own limitations is the hallmark of competence.
• If people will bring dynamite into a powder factory, they must expect explosions.
• But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?
• Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.
• How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
• He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin.
• The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.
• The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes About Life

First I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense inn it. — Dorothy L. Sayers

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Variety, individuality, peculiarity, eccentricity and indeed crankiness are agreeable to the British mind; they make life more interesting. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Except ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God. One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence. — Dorothy L. Sayers

If you want your own way, God will let you have it. Hell is the enjoyment of one's own way forever. — Dorothy L. Sayers

There's ways and ways of dyin'. Some is took, and some takes French leave, and others is 'elped out of life. — 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

There is no solution to death.Life intends to kill us. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes About Love

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

And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that? I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Of all devils let loose in the world there is no devil like devoted love. — Dorothy L. Sayers

It is said that love and a cough cannot be hid. — 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

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

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes About World

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? Sunday morning in an English family and no sausages? God bless my soul, what's the world coming to, eh? — Dorothy L. Sayers

We've got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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. — Dorothy L. Sayers

But to Lord Peter the world presented itself as an entertaining labyrinth of side-issues — 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

Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world. — 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

Nothing is more cruel to the young than to tell them that the world is made for youth. — Dorothy L. Sayers

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes About Work

I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The only Christian work is good work, well done — Dorothy L. Sayers

I have never yet heard any middle-aged man or woman who worked with his or her brains express any regret for the passing of youth. — Dorothy L. Sayers

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

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

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

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

No share-pusher could vend his worthless stock, if he could not count on meeting, in his prospective victim, an unscrupulous avarice as vicious as his own, but stupider. 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

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes About Literature

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

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them. — Dorothy L. Sayers

this is the weakness of most 'edifying' or 'propaganda' literature. There is no diversity...You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes About English

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

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds. — 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

A passage is not plain English - still less is it good English - if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

Dorothy L. Sayers Famous Quotes And Sayings

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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. — 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 great man has a woman behind him ... And every great woman has some man or other in front of her, tripping her up. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The trouble is. . .that everybody sneers at restrictions and demands freedom, till something annoying happens; then they demand angrily what has become of the discipline. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development. — 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

you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes. — 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

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

Everybody is, I suppose, either Classic or Gothic by nature. Either you feel in your bones that buildings should be rectangular boxes with lids to them, or you are moved to the marrow by walls that climb and branch, and break into a inflorescence of pinnacles. — Dorothy L. Sayers

A woman fit to be a man's wife is too good to be his servant. — 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

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

To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Praise God (or whatever it is) from (if direction exists) whom (if personality exists) all blessings (if that word corresponds to any percept of objective reality) flow (if Heraclitus and Bergson and Einstein are correct in stating that everything is more or less flowing about). — 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

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

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

Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There's yeast in bread, but you can't make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be. — Dorothy L. Sayers

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks. — Dorothy L. Sayers

[W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble. — Dorothy L. Sayers

One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again. — 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

I have never regretted Paradise Lost since I discovered that it contained no eggs-and-bacon. — 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

She couldn't have found anything nastier to say if she had thought it out with both hands for a fortnight. — 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

But 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 — and very different from the kind that is being made at the moment. — 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

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

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

Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper — Dorothy L. Sayers

Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations ... the root causes of conflict are usually to be found in some wrong way of life in which all parties have acquiesced, and for which everybody must, to some extent, bear the blame. — Dorothy L. Sayers

There is only one kind of wisdom that has any social value, and that is the knowledge of one's own limitations. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. — 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

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

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

As I grow older and olderAnd totter towards the tomb,I find I care less and lessWho goes to bed with whom. — Dorothy L. Sayers

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. — Dorothy L. Sayers

What the Church should be telling him [the carpenter] is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Trouble shared is trouble halved. — Dorothy L. Sayers

... at no point have I yet found artistic truth and theological truth at variance. — Dorothy L. Sayers

It's very good of you--" "No, no, not at all. It's my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don't mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I'll call again, if I may." "I will give the footman orders to admit you," said the prisoner, gravely, "you will always find me at home. — Dorothy L. Sayers

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Very dangerous things, theories. — Dorothy L. Sayers

We may argue eloquently that 'Honesty is the best Policy' - unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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? — Dorothy L. Sayers

I gather that he nearly knocked you down, damaged your property, and generally made a nuisance of himself, and that you instantly concluded he must be some relation to me. — 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

Anythin' wrong leaves a kind of impression on the eye; brain trots along afterwards with the warnin'. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The doctrine of hell is not "mediaeval priestcraft" for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin.... We cannot repudiate hell without altogether repudiating Christ. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Christendom and heathendom now stand face to face... At bottom is a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of God and the nature of an and the ultimate nature of the universe; it is a war of dogma. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The Devil is a spiritual lunatic, but, like many lunatics, he is extremely plausible and cunning. — Dorothy L. Sayers

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Forgiveness is the one unpardonable sin. — 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

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

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

Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face, however difficult it may be. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

Life Lessons by Dorothy L. Sayers

1. Dorothy L. Sayers teaches us to be mindful of our actions and to think before we act, as she often wrote about the consequences of rash decisions.
2. She also encourages us to be brave and take risks, as she often wrote about characters who stepped out of their comfort zone and explored new opportunities.
3. Finally, she reminds us to be humble, as she often wrote about characters who were willing to admit their mistakes and learn from them.