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To start with invention is the mark of the fertile mind ... and leads later to the interpretation of experience to start with the reproduction of experience is the infallible index of a barren invention.

Dorothy L. Sayers

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Dorothy L. Sayers
Age: 64 †
Born: 1893
Born: June 13
Died: 1957
Died: December 17
Copywriter
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Essayist
Novelist
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Short Story Writer
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Dorothy Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers Fleming
Dorothy L Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Fleming
Mind
Interpretation
Invention
Leads
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Reproduction
Later
Infallible
Start
Fertile
Experience
Barren

More quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

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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.
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I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.
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That you cannot have Christian principles without Christ is becoming increasingly clear, because their validity as principles depends on Christ's authority.
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Well, it seems like a miracle to be able to look forward-to-to see all the minutes in front of one come hopping along with something marvellous in them, instead of just[Pg 295] saying, Well, that one didn't actually hurt and the next may be quite bearable if only something beastly doesn't come pouncing out--
Dorothy L. Sayers
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Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper
Dorothy L. Sayers
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It is as dangerous for people unaccustomed to handling words and unacquainted with their technique to tinker about with these heavily-charged nuclei of emotional power as it would be for me to burst into a laboratory and play about with a powerful electromagnet or other machine highly charged with electrical force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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There are times when one is tempted to say that the great, sprawling, lethargic sin of Sloth is the oldest and greatest of the sins and the parent of all the rest.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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Variety, individuality, peculiarity, eccentricity and indeed crankiness are agreeable to the British mind they make life more interesting.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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She reflected she must be completely besotted about Peter, if his laughter could hallow an aspidistra.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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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
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Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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It is the first duty of a gentleman to remember in the morning who he went to bed with the night before.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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What the Church should be telling him [the carpenter] is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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There is one vast human experience that confronts us so formidably that we cannot pretend to overlook it. There is no solution to death. There is no means whatever whereby you or I, by taking thought, can solve this difficulty in such a manner that it no longer exists.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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But you see, I can believe a thing without understanding it. It's all a matter of training.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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What is the use of acquiring one's heart's desire if one cannot handle and gloat over it, show it to one's friends, and gather an anthology of envy and admiration?
Dorothy L. Sayers
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To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time man measures everything by his own experience he has no other yardstick.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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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.
Dorothy L. Sayers