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Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

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Famous Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

“Birth is beastly - and death - and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful suprème de sole, with the caviare in boats, and the croûtons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets - I could cry. But there it is, don't you know.”

IfsThinkingKnowsLittlesSometimesBeautifulCryBirthEatingHappeningsBoatSoleTwistsPotatoesGadgetsDigestionJollyBeastly
Book:The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
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“Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel-cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice. A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.”

ThinkingWayHas BeensWholeLastsOrderThreeSocialWorkEconomicCenturyWasteEconomicsProductionsEnvyConfusionConsumptionCagesTrashAvariceSquirrelsSocial Systems
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram.”

IfsKnowsShouldYearsHeartThreeJesusChristBrainTakenJesus ChristWitAll TimeAccentsRepetitionPulpitOutputEpigramsIncessantRetorts
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.”

PeopleWorldShouldTryingStoriesShowsCoursesFunJusticeViewsNovelAliveMysteryOughtOffersHungerBeing TrueDetectivesOrderlyMystery NovelsStealthDetective Stories
Book:Thrones, Dominations
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“Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? Do you promise to observe seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, Super Criminals and Lunatics and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science? Will you honor the King's English? ... If you fail to keep your promise, may other writers steal your plots and your pages swarm with misprints.”

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Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations ... the root causes of conflict are usually to be found in some wrong way of life in which all parties have acquiesced, and for which everybody must, to some extent, bear the blame.”

ThinkingWayWarHappensFoundCausesPartySituationBearsConflictRootsBlameIrrationalCatastropheWay Of ThinkingWrong WayRoot CauseCauses Of Conflict
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.”

IfsMenGivingWritingLongDoeBookMotherNamesWitOld FashionedHolmesMother Wit
Book:The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death
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