14 Quotes by Dorothy Sayers

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 sworeMy love was infinite, if spring makes it more.

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.

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.

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.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.

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

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

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.