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Dorothy L. Sayers QUOTES

Dorothy L. Sayers QUOTES

1 " Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers

2 " 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 , Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)

3 " The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)

4 " See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

5 " Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain;
If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death! "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Catholic Tales and Christian Songs

6 " The planet's tyrant, dotard Death, had held his gray mirror before them for a moment and shown them the image of things to come. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers

7 " [O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

8 " This recognition of the truth we get in the artist’s work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give a writer by nodding our heads and observing, “Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves withint our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet has shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays

9 " 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

10 " 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 , The Mind of the Maker

11 " I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I'm afraid. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers

12 " The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)

13 " What women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle. It is true that most women care nothing about him, and a great many male undergraduates turn pale and faint at the thought of him-but I, eccentric individual that I am, do want to know about Aristotle, and I submit that there is nothing in my shape or bodily functions which need prevent my knowing about him. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers

14 " I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command. "

― Dorothy L. Sayers

15 " 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 , The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Lord Peter Wimsey, #4)

16 " It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces? "

― Dorothy L. Sayers , Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)

17 " 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 , Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)

18 " 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 , Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)

19 " 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 , Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

20 " [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 , The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist