Dorothy L. Sayers

In the linked arms of Bacchus and Aphrodite.

Dorothy L. Sayers

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.

Dorothy L. Sayers

... I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your lordship's cellar, that, although I was obliged to drink a somewhat large quantity both of the Cockburn '68 and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no headache or other ill effects this morning. Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit from the country air, and that the little information I have been able to obtain will prove satisfactory, I remain, With respectful duty to all the family, their ladyships, Obediently yours, MERVIN HUNTER.  "Y'know," said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself, "I sometimes think Mervin Hunter's pullin' my leg.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I sleuth, you know. For a hobby. Harmless outlet for natural inquisitiveness, don't you see, which might otherwise strike inward and produce introspection an' suicide. Very natural, healthy pursuit -- not too strenuous, not too sedentary; trains and invigorates the mind.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?"" Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvelous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day – for a bit, anyhow.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”“Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.

Dorothy L. Sayers

It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and—which would not please Lady Astor, perhaps—the whole of the nation’s brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. Here are the women’s jobs—and what has become of them? They are all being handled by men. It is all very well to say that woman’s place is the home—but modern civilization has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organized by men at the head of large factories. Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone, to be replaced by a male mechanic in charge of a mechanical milking plant.

Dorothy L. Sayers

It is arguable that when Humanists, "Shook off," as people say, "the trammels of religion," and discovered things of this world as objects of veneration in their own right... they began to lose the finer appreciation of even the world itself. Thus to the Christian centuries, the flesh was holy (or racer at least in one sense or the other), and they veiled its awful majesty; to the Humanist centuries it was divine in its own right, and they exhibited it. Now it is the commonplace of the magazine cover. It has lost its lumen. So too with the cult of knowledge for its own sake declining from the Revival of Learning to the Brains Trust.

Dorothy L. Sayers

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?

Dorothy L. Sayers

It will be sent that, although the writer's love is verily a jealous love, it is a jealousy for and not of his creatures. He will tolerate no interference either with them or between them and himself.

Dorothy L. Sayers

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