Dorothy L. Sayers was an English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and Christian humanist. She is best known for her detective novels featuring the character Lord Peter Wimsey. However, her writings go beyond just fiction and delve into various topics such as feminism, education, and theology. Throughout her life, Sayers provided invaluable insights and thoughts that continue to inspire and resonate with readers today. Here are some memorable Dorothy Sayers quotes that will make you think and reflect on life’s complexities.
Read these Dorothy Sayers quotes
“The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men… but the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world.”
“The only Christian work is good work, well done.”
“The dogma that ‘all men are equal’ means merely that no man must be treated as if he were unequal to others.”
“In reaction against the age-old slogan, ‘woman is the weaker vessel,’ or the still more offensive, ‘woman is a divine creature,’ we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that ‘a woman is as good as a man,’ without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that.”
“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.”
“The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.”
“The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”
“To work means to put your brain into gear and to do it. Not to work means to put your brain into neutral and to do nothing.”
“The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless, to refuse to be itself, to betray itself.”
“The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils, we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For the famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
“It is the business of the church to recognize that the secular vocation, as such, is sacred. Christian people, and particularly perhaps the Christian clergy, must get it firmly into their heads that when a man or woman is called to a particular job of secular work, that is as true a vocation as though he or she were called to specifically religious work.”
“If a game is designed to produce a result identical with that of real life, it is by definition an immoral game. A game which presents an idealized version of life is a moral game.”
“The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.”
“It is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but men to Christ.”
“Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”
“The modern tradition is that the woman sits at home and does nothing and the man goes out and does everything; and she resents that bitterly. So what is the sensible thing for the man to do? To go home and do nothing and let the woman go out and do the work.”
“The proper study of mankind is man, and woman is not without her interest.”
“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”
“The religious life ought to be the greatest and most passionate adventure the human spirit can undertake.”
“A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.”
“Work should be done for its own sake, not for the sake of fame or money.”
These Dorothy Sayers quotes showcase her brilliance and thought-provoking ideas. They remind us of the importance of work, equality, and the pursuit of truth. Sayers’ words continue to enlighten and challenge us, urging us to think deeply about the world we live in and our place in it.
