Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

Theories then are dangerous things.

A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.

The deeper you dig, the bigger the possibility that something could happen.

To make abstractions hold in reality is to destroy reality.

[A] theory is a very dangerous thing to have.

Play with me and you play with fire.

June smiled. "So what will it be? Safety, or a future of pain and possibility?"

Never tempt fate. It plays for keeps.

What you don't know will hurt you.

[To her younger sister on using drugs:] If you do that stuff, you're dancing with the devil, because you never know when you're going to cross the line and not be able to get back.

Collaboration is risky. If it fails, if the occupation is wound up prematurely and the bad guys come back to power, you might find yourself in some serious trouble.

That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

An abstraction will move a mountain: Nothing can withstand an idea.

Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them on the rocks.

Curiosity is its own suicide.

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability.

A hole in the ice is dangerous only to those who go skating.

Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

Every big computing disaster has come from taking too many ideas and putting them in one place.

Be careful what you yearn for, because that which you desire most will either complete you or destroy you, and you don't get to choose.

Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.

In philosophy, the principles are more interesting than the examples. In literature, the examples are more interesting than the principles.

It's never a good idea to ask a man on a tight-rope how he keeps his balance: a) he would probably fall off and b) he probably doesn't know what the muscles are called in any case.

Magic gives you a lot of choices," Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.

It was inevitable the Titanic was going to set sail, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea to be on it.