Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of individual identity over societal classification.
Dorothy L. Sayers highlights the fundamental human desire to be seen as unique individuals rather than merely representatives of a larger group. The quote suggests that reducing a person to just a member of a class strips them of their individuality, which is inherently repugnant to the essence of humanity.
Themes
IndividualityIdentityHumanityClassPerson
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of diversity, this quote can be used to advocate for recognizing individual stories.
More from Dorothy L. Sayers
All quotes βBut suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?" "You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
. . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
Similar quotes
We cannot wait any longer to deal with the structural causes of poverty, in order to heal our society from an illness that can only lead to new crises.
Pope FrancisRead
Definitions.... are never really needed, and rarely of any use
Karl PopperRead
In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
William JamesRead
You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate." "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.
Joseph HellerRead
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
Alice MunroRead