Dorothy L. Sayers

“People who make some other person part of their job are dangerous.”

“A continued atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own.”

“Trouble shared is trouble halved.”

“What we make is more important than what we are, particularly if making is our profession.”

“You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it.”

“The worst sin-perhaps the only sin- passion can commit is to be joyless.”

“Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman. But an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any force.”

“Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often-and a human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.”

“The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.”

“What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?...God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.”

“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 st...”

“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 a...”

“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.”

“[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 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 w...”

“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. (Let...”