Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers (English Novelist, Playwright)

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957,) fully Dorothy Leigh Sayers, was an English detective-story writer. She is chiefly known for her detective fiction featuring the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey; titles include The Nine Tailors (1934.)

Born in Oxford, Sayers was educated at the Godolphin School-Salisbury and Somerville College-Oxford (where she studied medieval literature and modern languages.) She taught for a year and then worked in an advertising agency until 1931.

Beginning with Whose Body? (1923) and Clouds of Witness (1926,) Sayers’s novels tell the adventures of her hero Lord Peter Wimsey in various accurately observed milieux, such as advertising in Murder Must Advertise (1933) or campanology (the study of bells) in The Nine Tailors (1934.) Her other stories included Strong Poison (1930,) Gaudy Night (1935,) Busman’s Honeymoon (1937,) and In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939.)

Sayers earned a reputation as a leading Christian apologist with two successful plays, The Zeal of Thy House (1937) and The Devil to Pay (1939,) a series for broadcasting (The Man Born to be King, 1943) and a closely reasoned essay (The Mind of the Maker, 1941.)

She made scholarly translations of Dante’s Inferno (1949) and Purgatorio (1955.) Her translation of Dante’s Paradiso was left unfinished at her death. Her biographer (Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul (1993)) Barbara Reynolds completed it.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Dorothy L. Sayers

The worst sin—perhaps the only sin—passion can commit is to be joyless.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Unhappiness, Happiness, Passion

To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.
Dorothy L. Sayers

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Consumerism

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Aging, Age

Trouble shared is trouble halved.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Adversity, Trouble

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Writing

As I grow older and older
And totter towards the tomb,
I find I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Sex

There is a universal moral law, as distinct from a moral code, which consists of certain statements of fact about the nature of man, and by behaving in conformity with which, man may enjoy his true freedom.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Ethics

The library, with its tall bays and overhanging gallery, looked east and was already rather dark. Harriet found it restful.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Libraries

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Advertising

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: War

It 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.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Boredom

She always says, my lord, that facts are like cows. If you look them in the face hard enough they generally run away.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Facts

Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Wealth

Trouble shared is trouble halved.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Adversity

I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Quotations

Except ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, “ye cannot enter the kingdom of God.” One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Birthdays, Age

The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Truth

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Lawyers, Law

A human being must have occupation, of he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Topics: Work

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