Quotes by British Authors - Page 10

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.
Jeremy Bentham
Baldrick: Have you got a plan, my lord?Blackadder: Yes I have, and it's so cunning you can brush your teeth with it!
Richard Curtis
When the positive revolution takes hold it will no longer be enough for politicians to gain points through attack or being negative. Politicians will be expected to be constructive.
Edward de Bono
Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.)
Christopher Hitchens
A woman, she had provoked this horror; a woman, she shouldh ave known how to deal with it. It was immesley to her discredit, sexually, to stand there dumb. One said - what did one say? - Oh, Mr. Ramsay! Dear Mr. Ramsay! That was what that kind old lady who sketched, Mrs. Beckwith, would have said instantly, and rightly. But, no. They stood there, isolated from the rest of the world. His immesnse self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and and spread itself in pools at her feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet.
Virginia Woolf
Plants can be affected by stray voltage and they may show stunted growth, deformed growth, or go dormant. In extreme cases they may die.
Steven Magee
There's no beauty without some sadness or damage, or at least the potential of damage. If something's unbreakable, you can't love it because it doesn't need your love. It's the thing that don't last that really move us.
Rory Dunlop
No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes
Virginia Woolf
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
George Gordon Byron
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
Bertrand Russell
Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats.
Douglas Adams
My friend, you are truly yourself alone. God must have broken the mould after turning you out.
Jack Higgins
To achieve peace,we needed to have a war to start with.
Anthony T.Hincks
What was really unfair about the whole thing was that Oma Kristel hadn't so much exploded as spontaneously combusted. But Gossip is Baron Münchhausen's little sister, and never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.
Helen Grant
Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life. To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness - that is a very terrible thing.
Enid Blyton
If it gathers dust, give it away ...
Ian Tucker
Around the outside of the room other beautiful women wearing little or nothing at all flitted between the infatuated, intoxicated men, sometimes luring them away for a private dance. The men would follow obediently, weighed down by lust and credit cards.
R.D. Ronald
No, Harry, you listen," said Hermione. "We're coming with you. That was decided months ago - years, really.
J.K. Rowling
With the ferrule of his walking-stick Denis began to scratch the boar's long bristly back. The animal moved a little so as to bring himself within easier range of the instrument that evoked in him such delicious sensations; then he stood stock still, softly grunting his contentment. The mud of years flaked off his sides in a grey powdery scurf. "What a pleasure it is," said Denis, "to do somebody a kindness. I believe I enjoy scratching this pig quite as much as he enjoys being scratched. If only one could always be kind with so little expense or trouble...
Aldous Huxley
Don’t limit your potential, embrace then accentuate the Power of your Heart’s consciousness.
Steven Redhead
...and as she stood on the Ashford platform waiting for the small train to come in, she seemed already separated from the people around her. Tomorrow I shall not be among you anymore; not of you but mysteriously still with you, thought Philippa. As Lady Abbess of Brede had said, "People think we renounce the world. We don't. We renounce its ways but we are still very much in it and it is very much in us.
Rumer Godden
This was genius at close quarters, and genius had that something above normal in it that was a great strain upon the ordinary mind and feeling. All five were different from each other, yet each had that curious quality of burning intensity, the single-mindedness of purpose that made such a terrifying impression. She did not know whether it were a quality of brain or rather a quality of outlook, of intensity. But each of them, she thought, was in his or her way a passionate idealist.
Agatha Christie
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
Ben Goldacre
When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
Algernon Blackwood
To thoughtful natures, events are like depth charges: the surface is calm, but the shock spreads further.
Amanda Craig
Wisdom with an inheritance is good, but wisdom without an inheritance is better than an inheritance without wisdom.
Anne Bradstreet
All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil.
Ellis Peters
You can’t help who you are, but you can change who you want to be.
Benny Bellamacina
The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?
Alexander McCall Smith
Don’t you think it’s actually harder for you . . . to adapt, I mean? Because you’ve done all that stuff?’‘Are you asking me if I wish I'd never done it?’‘I’m just wondering if it would have been easier for you. If you’d led a smaller life. To live like this, I mean.’‘I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, if you’re stuck in one of these, all you have are the places n your memory that you can go to.’ He smiled. It was tight, as if it cost him. ‘So if you’re asking me would I rather be reminiscing about the view of the caste from the minimart, or that lovely row of shops down off the roundabout, then, no. My life was just fine, thanks.
Jojo Moyes
Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the samefeelings.""I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least beno want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.
Jane Austen
You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself plainly when you have need of him.
J.K. Rowling
Nowadays, no one believes in evil. It is considered, at most, a mere negation of good. Evil, people say, is done by those who know no better - who are undeveloped - who are to be pitied rather than blamed. But, M. Poirot, evil is real! It is a fact! I believe in Evil as I believe in Good. It exists! It is powerful! It walks the earth!' He stopped. His breath was coming fast. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and looked suddenly apologetic. 'I'm sorry. I got carried away.
Agatha Christie
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
Neil Gaiman
Darwinian Man though well-behaved At best is only a monkey shaved!
W.S. Gilbert
Few female characters get to be “the Chosen One” in science fiction and fantasy. Leia is as much the child of Darth Vader as Luke is, but only Luke gets to use the force, be recruited by his dad and ultimately save the day. We don’t get impossibly clever female sleuths or the sexy spies with the awesome gadgets. And on the rare occasions that we do get those characters, they’re denigrated as unrealistic Mary Sues.
Rhiannon Thomas
And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
Terry Pratchett
...those who break the law should be loved more and not less for their sin, for if we do not forgive then is sin added to sin and the end is death.
Elizabeth Goudge
After a long analysis of Robson’s suicide, we concluded that it could only be considered philosophical in an arithmetical sense of the term: he, being about to cause an increase of one in the human population, had decided it was his ethical duty to keep the planet’s numbers constant.
Julian Barnes
LamentFor JAmong the small graves a soft shaft of sunlight gently rainsOn a memory; etches, as a glittering finger,Golden corn field hair, ignites eyes sweet as the seas blue plains,Traces lips pink as Marys carnation tears and lingersThen is gone. Oh ancient sun above how shall I tellOf the hearts deep yearnings that the years can never quell?
Alan James Roll
At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampar’s chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma’s shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother’s shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn’t use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she’d cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special.None of these things did anything. The coffee spoons didn’t stir the coffee without being held or anything. They didn’t have conversations with the sugar tongs about who was the most cherished. I suppose what they really did was physiological. They confirmed the past, they connected everything, they were threads in a tapestry.
Jo Walton
It is not that I was credulous, simply that I belived in all things dark and dangerous. It was part of my young creed that the night was full of ghosts and witches, hungry and flapping and dressed completely in black.
Neil Gaiman
She fails to see who I am, even, for her eyes do not, will not, take me in. Instead they transmit a powerful message. She is like a billboard flashing, starkly: 'Keep Out'.
Carol Lee
... the possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet.
C.S. Lewis
Night gets its own way in the end. The torches go out, the fire burns down to its internal organs, and the hall is charcoal and darkness.His mind shrinks as the heat dies, a ticking ember.
Matthew Francis
The only measure of what you believe is what you do. If you want to know what people believe don't read what they write don't ask them what they believe just observe what they do.
Ashley Montagu
To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster.
Stirling Moss
You can’t fathom the alien mind.
Adam Christopher
Yeah, I must have been really bad in a past life or something." He smiled, his eyes still in pain. Reaching up, he touched a strand of mt hair. " Don't leave, OK?""Shhh. I'm not going anywhere." I kept stroking his forehead, trailing my fingers across it. His muscular shoulders gradually relaxed, his eyes closing again. His breathing slowed, became more regular.I could hear the TV on in the other room, the sound of voices. None of it mattered to me. I stayed there until long after Alex had fallen asleep-- gently caressing the vbrow of the boy I loved, trying to keep his pain at bay.
l.a weatherly
He had just compunction enough for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly anxious that everybody else should do a great deal.
Jane Austen
Now it is time!" then louder, "Time!"; and then so loud it could have shaken the stars; "TIME." The door flew open.
C.S. Lewis
Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.
J.M. Barrie
I’m glad you’re quitting the bar.""You are?""Yeah. I’ve never liked you working there, and I miss you at the weekend.""Why didn’t you say anything?""Because you seemed happy. It’s sort of my life mission to make sure you stay that way," he teased.
Samantha Young
He loved me and I loved him, but the number in my head was telling me that he was going to die today. And the numbers had never been wrong.
Rachel Ward
Is it necessary to believe in the existence of the six realms and the heavens and hells to be a Buddhist? Not necessarily. It is possible to interpret these as, perhaps, referring to other dimensions of existence, parallel universes, or simply states of mind.
Damien Keown
I do not think that a man's rise to power is necessarily the climax of his life or that his loss of office should be equated with his fall.
Isaac Deutscher
Cheating is an health issue.
Alan Johnson
Always present yourself as a woman who expects to succeed.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Do you believe in God, Martin?'And he answered, 'Yes, because of His trees. Don't you?''I'm not sure...''Oh, my poor, blind Stephen! Look again, go on looking until you do believe.
Radclyffe Hall
Now, over half of us live in an urban environment. My home, too, is here in the city of London. Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape the surface of our planet is very striking. It’s also very sobering, and reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world.Yet it’s on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world will depend. And surely, it is our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.
David Attenborough