Dorothy Leigh Sayers (/ˈsɛərz/ ; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was a renowned English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.
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 doctrine of hell is not "mediaeval priestcraft" for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin. . . . We cannot repudiate hell without altogether repudiating Christ.
Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.
We ought to recognise the profound gulf between the work to which we are 'called' and the work we are forced into as a means of livelihood.
Plain lies are dangerous.
There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe.
Nothing is more vulgar than a careful avoidance of beginning a letter with the first person singular.
A continual atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own.
You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it.
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.
There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.
It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse. . . If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?
the heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.
None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.
There's ways and ways of dyin'. Some is took, and some takes French leave, and others is 'elped out of life.
A woman fit to be a man's wife is too good to be his servant.
First I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense inn it.
Why? Oh, well - I thought you'd be rather an attractive person to marry. That's all. I mean, I sort of took a fancy to you. I can't tell you why. There's no rule about it, you know.
I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.