Quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

“Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take ... You don't want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person.""That's true. That's the truest th...”

“I suppose one oughtnt to marry anybody, unless ones prepared to make him a full-time job.Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who dont look on themselves as jobs but as fell...”

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

“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.”

“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 statement...”

“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...”

“Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper”

“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!”

“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.”

“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 dentis...”

“What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there ...”

“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.”

“You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a lesson to him," said Miss Hillyard. "It didn't pay, did it? Say he sacrificed his professional honour...”

“It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry andwhich would not please Lady ...”

“Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity, Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of powe...”

“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of ...”

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

“This recognition of the truth we get in the artists 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...”

“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.”

“The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written., 8 Septembe...”