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Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

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Famous Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

“Well, well -- the prizes all go to the women who 'play their cards well' -- but if they can only be won in that way, I would rather lose the game ... [C]lever [women] bide their time -- make themselves indispensable first, and then se font prier [=play hard to get]. Clever -- but I can't do it.”

MenWomenMarriageHonestyTricksDeceptionAttachmentClevernessPermanency
Book:The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist
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“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”

MenWritingWomenNaturalFictionFeminismConversationPrejudiceGenderMisogynyStereotypesDouble StandardsWomen WritersClichés
Book:Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
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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.”

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Book:The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death
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“The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man-and the dogma is the drama ... The plot pivots upon a single character, and the whole action is the answer to a single central problem: 'What think ye of Christ?'... He was emphatically not a dull m an in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either.”

IfsThinkingMenHumansWholeCharacterProblemActionChristianChristImaginationAnswersDramaExcitingLifetimeDullPlotDogmaChristian Faith
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“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.”

KnowsMenMeanMadeFilmYoungCertainReadingLeftEmotionKnow HowTeachingMastersMen And WomenMercyEdgesRadioIntellectInventionSecureYoung ManPreyPrintedArmorBluntAversionBatteriesFlingIncessantUnarmedPrinted Word
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“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.”

KnowsMenWould BeUsedMotherFatherInterestingBehindsKnow HowWifeGreatnessHusbandEmpowermentStandingFeministGreat MenWomen EmpowermentStereotypeEmpowered WomenGreat WomenGreat FatherGreat MotherGreat Wife
Book:Gaudy Night
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“I think the most joyous thing in life is to loaf around and watch another bloke do a job of work. Look how popular are the men who dig up London with electric drills. Duke's son, cook's son, son of a hundred kings, people will stand there for hours on end, ear drums splitting. Why? Simply for the pleasure of being idle while watching other people work.”

PeopleThinkingMenLooksEndsJobsLife IsHoursPleasureWatchesSonKingsHundredEarsLondonCooksElectricThings In LifeIdleJoyousDukesDrillsSplittingBlokes
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Philip wasn't the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I did, you know. But I couldn't stand being made a fool of. I couldn;t stand being put on probation, like an office-boy, to see if I was good enough to be condescended to. I quite thought he was honest when he said he didn't believe in marriage -- and then it turned out that it was a test, to see whether my devotion was abject enough. Well, it wasn't. I didn't like having matrimony offered as a bad-conduct prize.”

IfsKnowsMenBelieveWellsMadeSaidEnoughWantedBoysHonestFoolOfficeTestsDevotionPrizeGood EnoughMatrimonyDid You KnowPhilipProbation
Book:Strong Poison
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“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.”

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Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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