She reflected she must be completely besotted about Peter, if his laughter could hallow an aspidistra. Dorothy L. Sayers More Quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers More Quotes From Dorothy L. Sayers We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served. Dorothy L. Sayers purpose special people I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves. Dorothy L. Sayers details character facts the truth and value of a theory does not depend on the number of people who are interested in it - otherwise you might compare the number of people who follow the predictions of astrologers in the daily press with those who attend lectures by Einstein, and conclude that astrology was more valuable and true than physics. Dorothy L. Sayers astrology numbers people [N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature. Dorothy L. Sayers real mind book Everybody is, I suppose, either Classic or Gothic by nature. Either you feel in your bones that buildings should be rectangular boxes with lids to them, or you are moved to the marrow by walls that climb and branch, and break into a inflorescence of pinnacles. Dorothy L. Sayers gothic wall branches Praise God (or whatever it is) from (if direction exists) whom (if personality exists) all blessings (if that word corresponds to any percept of objective reality) flow (if Heraclitus and Bergson and Einstein are correct in stating that everything is more or less flowing about). Dorothy L. Sayers personality blessing reality For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. Dorothy L. Sayers reading teaching mean No share-pusher could vend his worthless stock, if he could not count on meeting, in his prospective victim, an unscrupulous avarice as vicious as his own, but stupider. 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 victim men people To the average man, life presents itself, not as material malleable to his hand, but as a series of problems...which he has to solve...And he is distressed to find that the more means he can dispose of-such as machine-power, rapid transport, and general civilized amenities, the more his problems grow in hardness and complexity....Perhaps the first thing he can learn form the artists is that the only way of 'mastering' one's material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love: whosoever will be a lord of life, let him be its servant. Dorothy L. Sayers love men mean The education that we have so far succeeded in giving to the bulk of our citizens has produced a generation of mental slatterns. Dorothy L. Sayers generations citizens giving I have never yet heard any middle-aged man or woman who worked with his or her brains express any regret for the passing of youth. Dorothy L. Sayers regret brain men It's very inconvenient being a sculptor. It's like playing the double-bass; one's so handicapped by one's baggage. Dorothy L. Sayers double-bass sculpture baggage A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. Dorothy L. Sayers independent marriage two Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There's yeast in bread, but you can't make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Dorothy L. Sayers three meals blow Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper Dorothy L. Sayers oh-well paper heart It was left for the present age to endow Covetousness with glamour on a big scale, and to give it a title which it could carry like a flag. It occurred to somebody to call it Enterprise. From the moment of that happy inspiration, Covetousness has gone forward and never looked back. Dorothy L. Sayers inspiration business giving 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 law may men Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it. Dorothy L. Sayers bed song heaven Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be. Dorothy L. Sayers matter may people To make a precise scientific description of reality out of words is like trying to build a rigid structure out of pure quicksilver. Dorothy L. Sayers structure trying reality
