470 Quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?" "You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.

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.

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.

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

Do you know how to pick a lock?" "Not in the least, I'm afraid." "I often wonder what we go to school for," said Wimsey.

The education that we have so far succeeded in giving to the bulk of our citizens has produced a generation of mental slatterns.

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

Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? Do you promise to observe seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, Super Criminals and Lunatics and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science? Will you honor the King's English? ... If you fail to keep your promise, may other writers steal your plots and your pages swarm with misprints.