The Man Born to Be King Quotes

“JESUS: because the love was so great, the sin is all forgiven.

LAZARUS: Kind Rabbi, you told me so, when I fell at your feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee... Did you know? my companions and I came there that day to mock you. We thought you would be sour and grim, hating all beauty and treating life as an enemy. But when I saw you, I was amazed. you were the only person there that was really alive. The rest of us were going about half-dead—making the gestures of life, pretending to be real people. The life was not with us but with you—intense and shining, like the strong sun when it rises and turns the flames of our candles to pale smoke. And I wept and was ashamed, seeing myself such a thing of trash and tawdry. But when you spoke to me, I felt the flame of the sun in my heart. I came alive for the first time. And I love life all the more since I have learnt its meaning.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

“I speak for a sorrowful people—for the ignorant and the poor. We rise up to labour and lie down to sleep, and night is only a pause between one burden and another. Fear is our daily companion—the fear of want, the fear of war, the fear of cruel death, and of still more cruel life. But all this we could bear if we knew that we did not suffer in vain; that God was beside us in the struggle, sharing the miseries of His own world. For the riddle that torments the world is this: Shall Sorrow and Love be reconciled at last, when the promised Kingdom comes?”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

“Happy are the poor, for nothing stands between them and the Kingdom. Happy are the sorrowful, for their souls are made strong through suffering. Happy are the humble, for they receive the whole world as a gift. Happy are they who long for holiness as a man longs for food, for they shall enjoy God’s plenty. Happy are the merciful, for they are mercifully judged. Happy are they who establish peace, for they share God’s very nature. Happy are the single-hearted, for they see God.

And think yourselves happy when people hate and shun you, when they insult and revile and persecute you for the Son of Man’s sake. When that happens to you, you may laugh and dance for joy. It is a sign that you are right with God, for all true prophets are persecuted, and God will be your reward.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

“God deals gently with beginners. He will not bear heavily on a split cane or smother a smouldering fire.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

“Worldly people, you see, use far more wisdom, about their trifling affairs than unworldly people do about the affairs of God. They give their minds to what they are doing. And I say to you. Learn from them. Learn how to deal with the world and make friends with worldly people, so that when everything earthly fails you may know the way to their hearts. The man who is reliable in little things is reliable in great things too—and if you can’t handle the goods of this world, how can you be trusted to handle the true treasures of Heaven?”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

“I cannot tell you how wonderful these days have seemed. It is as though everything one said and did, every stone, every flower and the blessed light itself had a new meaning. You must be the happiest woman in the world. I’m sure we are the happiest men. But everybody feels that happiness—the sick and the poor, and the women with their little child—”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King

“The work no master may subject
Save He to whom the whole is known,
Being Himself the Architect,
The Craftsman and the Corner-stone.

Then, when the greatest and the least
Have finished all their labouring
And sit together at the feast,
You shall behold a wonder thing:

The Maker of the men that make
Will stoop between the cherubim,
The towel and the basin take,
And serve the servants who serve Him.

The Architect and Craftsman both
Agreed, the Stone had spoken well;
Bound them to service by an oath
And each to his own labour fell.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King