Quotes from Dorothy Sayers

Francis Bacon," said Peter, a trifle belatedly. "Mr. Kirk, you're a man after my own heart.

This is the Christian faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." The harsh and much-disputed statement begins to look like a blunt statement of fact, for how can anyone make anything of life if there is no belief in life? If we truly desire a creative life for ourselves and other people, it is our task to rebuild the world along creative lines, but we must be sure that we desire it enough.

They accept for themselves everything that was affirmed of creative life incarnate, including the love and, if necessary, the crucifixion, death, and victory. Looking at what happened to that life, they will expect to be saved, not from danger and suffering, but in danger and suffering.

If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller—all other interests, your own and other people's.

Mademoiselle, I tell you frankly that to have a healthy mind in a healthy body is the greatest gift of le bon Dieu, and when I see so many people who have clean blood and strong bodies spoiling themselves and distorting their brains with drugs and drink and foolishness, it makes me angry. They should leave that to the people who cannot help themselves because to them life is without hope.

From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells. It seems strange that a generation which tolerates the uproar of the internal combustion engine and the wailing of the jazz band should be so sensitive to the one loud noise that is made to the glory of God. England, alone in the world

Unfortunately, the sinner isn't always the victim. Why should it be? said Mathews. Nature does not work by a scheme of poetical justice. Nor does God, said Perry. We suffer for one another, as, indeed, we must, being all members one of another. Can you separate the child from the father, the man from the brute, or even the man from the vegetable cell...?

I'm all for scattering sunshine as we pass. As Stevenson says, we shall pass this way but once--and I devoutly hope he's right.

What a shocking set of crooks these English servants are! Not even murder will turn them from their feudal devotion to the man who pays!

Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is: it is so inestimable a jewel that, if a tyrant would give his crown for an hour's slumber, it cannot be bought: of so beautiful a shape is it, that though a man lie with an Empress, his heart cannot beat quite till he leaves her embracements to be at rest with the other: yea, so greatly indebted are we to this

Damn it, said Wimsey, savagely, I always did hate watering-places!

I am ready,' said Gilda Farren, 'to forgive—' 'Never do that,' said Wimsey. 'Forgiveness is the one unpardonable sin.