Quotes from Dorothy Sayers

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

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

The first thing a principle does is to kill somebody. --Gaudy Night

Forgiveness does not wipe away the consequences of the sin. The consequences are borne by somebody.

Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement? Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvelous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day – for a bit, anyhow.

Evil is the soul's choice of the not-God. The corollary is that damnation, or hell, is the permanent choice of the not-God. God does not (in the monstrous old-fashioned phrase) "send" anybody to hell; hell is that state of the soul in which its choice becomes obdurate and fixed; the punishment (so to call it) of that soul is to remain eternally in the state that it has chosen.

The possibility of evil exists from the moment that a creature is made that can love and do good because it chooses and not because it is unable to do anything else. The actuality of evil exists from the moment that that choice is exercised in the wrong direction.

As we cannot afford to squander our natural resources of minerals, food, and beauty, so we cannot afford to discard any human resources of brains, skills, and initiative, even though it is women who possess them...a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual.

What do you want me to do, Peter? Chuck the ball back to me if it runs out of the circle. Not obviously. Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth. That sounds easy. It is--for you. That's what I love you for. --Gaudy Night

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.

The incident had that rich savor of the ludicrous which neither pity nor charity can destroy. Unfortunately, she could not in decency share it with anybody; she could only enjoy it in lonely ecstasies of mirth.

She went to bed thinking more about another person than about herself. This goes to prove that even minor poetry may have its practical uses.

Harriet grinned at Betty Armstrong, hearing the familiar academic wrangle begin. Before ten minutes had passed, somebody had introduced the word values. An hour later they were still at it. Finally the Bursar was heard to quote: God made the integers; all else is the work of man. Oh, bother! cried the Dean. Do let's keep mathematics out of it. And physics. I cannot cope with them.

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

I trust you told her I had succumbed to lethargic encephalitis suddenly, no flowers by request.

She picked up the book from the bedside. A stray quotation from Peter should always be sought first in John Donne. She found it there, quite quickly. Methinks I lied all winter when I swore My love was infinite, if spring makes it more.

tolerance is] 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.

My idea is that Miss Vane didn't do it, said Wimsey. I dare say that's an idea which has already occurred to you, but with the weight of my great mind behind it, no doubt is strikes the imagination more forcibly.

As I grow older and older, And totter toward the tomb, I find that I care less and less Who goes to bed with whom.

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

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.