top of page
"Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Merit quotes

"Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters."

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving."

"Success does not judge one man for being worthy above another. Success doesn't choose you because of your family name or existing wealth."

"The amount of money you make ethically is directly proportionate to the value you add in others people's life."

"Today. the celebration is for the 'victorious', not the meritorious. The depiction to the youth, is that one can be victorious without merit, and that merit is less notable than victory. The result, is the masses are selectively and passively affirming that winning trumps hard work, that theft trumps the pride of ownership, and that personal success trumps collective progress."
Explore more quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

"At present we have no clear grasp of the principle that every man should do the work for which he is fitted by nature!"

"Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about commercial arsenic? Murderers learn it now at their mother's knee."

"I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command."

"I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction "from the woman's point of view. To such demands, one can only say "Go away and don't be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle."

"To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life., 8 September 1935)"

"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."

"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."

"(One character on another:) "Don't you know that I passionately dote on every chin on his face?"

"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."

"The more genuinely creative [the writer] is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of himself."
bottom of page