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"There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work."
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"The more light in your composition, the more generous you are. That is the first sign of a true light warrior. They give without waiting for you to ask. They give without expecting to be repaid. They give to strangers and even offer help to enemies. And sadly, because their light is so bright, they also attract tons of bugs and flies their way."

"The pleasure or the benefit that the object of our deed derives from it is every now and then greater or even more important than the one we derive from the deed."

"There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work."

"A selfless act out of even the purest desire to do for others, will be selfish in the satisfaction and happiness it brings to one doing it."

"Life is easier lived when lived for others."

"My entire life, I've never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp."
Explore more quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

"You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a lesson to him," said Miss Hillyard. "It didn't pay, did it? Say he sacrificed his professional honour for the women and children we hear so much about -- but in the end it left him worse of."But that," said Peter, "was only because he committed the extra sin of being found out."

"The more clamour we make about 'the women's point of view', the more we rub it into people that the women's point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is -- at least in my job. The line I always want to take is, that there is the 'point of view' of the reasonably enlightened human brain, and that this is the aspect of the matter which I am best fitted to uphold."

"She had her image and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper-and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further."

"To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh, to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door."

"Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development."

"The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists."

"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."

"Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes," or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox. 'I am an amateur,' said Lord Peter."

"The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all."
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