Quotes by British Authors - Page 118

Good riddance to the blatantly corrupt Democratic Party!
Steven Magee
We make choices every day, some of them good, some of them bad. And if we are strong enough, we live with the consequences.
David Gemmell
A woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke.
Rudyard Kipling
George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus the death' or 'life minus the breathing'.
Gideon Haigh
So none of the young men we encountered during our season gave you hot pants for them?Belinda! Your language. I've been mingling with Americans. Such fun. So Naughty.
Rhys Bowen
I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
Charles Dickens
for to have a deep attachment for a person (or a place or thing) is to have taken them as the terminating object of our instinctual responses."Separation anxiety. International Journal of Psycho-Analysts, XLI, 1-25 (1959(
John Bowlby
Mr. Treadstone believed that there was always an apposite word. The English language, after all, was the richest in the world. If you couldn’t find the apposite word, if you found your language slipping into the mire of vagueness and obscurity, this meant that you needed to work on your vocabulary. Because the apposite word certainly existed – and it was very eager to make your acquaintance.
Gavin Extence
A hundred pounds! He couldn't remember ever having seen a hundred pounds, all at one time. He found himself envying his father, who had nothing to worry about except the future of mankind.
John Mortimer
He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.
Terry Pratchett
The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.
Russell Brand
And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer.
George Orwell
It is so tempting to try the most difficult thing possible.
Jennie Jerome Churchill
When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.
Jeanette Winterson
No evil ever came from a woman’s womb that wasn’t placed there first by a man.’... Tantie Neptune, Lucifer's Key by Charles A. Cornell, due 2013
Charles A. Cornell
Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.
Habeeb Akande
A man can believe in a considerable deal of rubbish and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.
Norman Douglas
From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,There's nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.
Hilaire Belloc
A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.
Johnny Rich
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin
All stories are lies. But good stories are lies made from light and fire. And they lift our hearts out of the dust, and out of the grave.
Mike Carey
You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.'Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
W Somerset Maugham
476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite?For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I heard a baby cry. And this blood-splattered thing was put in my arms. My child. And, at that moment, it was like a gigantic plug appeared and - POW! - I was plugged into humanity in a way I'd never been before. Never could be. I was part of all mothers and all births from the beginning of time. I was a woman in a mud hut in Africa, in an igloo in the Arctic, a wigwam in America, a cave, a skyscraper, a spaceship. I was part of a flow and that flow was blood -
Philip Ridley
She paused a moment."Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?" she said. "If you say 'no,' I shan't. But, please, Pepino--"Pepino, however, had been instructed to say 'yes,' and accordingly did so.
E.F. Benson
So much for progress. How quickly civilization could dissolve into its more ugly elements.
Kate Atkinson
Continuously, in commemoration of the FriendWe drank wine, even before the creation of the vine.
Idries Shah
It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed
Idries Shah
You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel—a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady
H.G.Wells
I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.
Lee Child
☺☺ When a man gets to 99, he starts to think, he may only have another 10 years of sexy lovemaking left... Still Smiling At 99. ☺☺
Michael Levy
But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.
Jane Austen
Juliet, the dice were loaded from the start. / When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?
Mark Knopfler
For every thing that lives is Holy.
William Blake
Sometimes you need to take a break from everyone and spend time alone, to experience, appreciate and love yourself.
Robert Tew
History is the hidden map of who, where and how we are today.
Elena Lappin
Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.
Michael Morpurgo
When I hang upside down and write the wrong way up, will my letters be upside down or the right way up?
Anthony T.Hincks
If we had more time, I wouldn’t allow you to give up on us," Cam said, with a wry smile. "There won't be anybody that will love you the way I love you, Thea. And I don't believe that anyone will love me the way you do. And you still do, you just need to remember that.
Zoey Ellis
There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by judgement (i.e., social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible. Blessed are we when persecuted, but we may avoid persecution by flying city to city, and may pray to be spared it as. Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane. But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads. In the fallen and partially redeemed universe, we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good out of simple evil does not excuse - though by mercy it may save -- those who do simple evil. And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that excuse for continuing to sin. The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil...For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.
C.S. Lewis
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return - that perhaps true loving can never know anything but true happiness.
Dodie Smith
To permit this gross new revelation to fade, or be forgiven, would be to devalue our most essential standard of what constitutes the unpardonable. And for what? For the reputation of a man who turns out to be not even a Holocaust denier but a Holocaust affirmer. There has to be a moral limit, and either this has to be it or we must cease pretending to ourselves that we observe one.
Christopher Hitchens
Turning things over and over in isolation had led me to a certain point, but I knew that to get any further I'd have to voice some ideas aloud, just to see how they sounded. But I certainly didn't go to Ellie expecting any kind of constructive input on her part. It was more that I'd hit a wall and needed someone to talk around the subject with - like when you come up against a problem that's just immune to normal logic.
Gavin Extence
My mouth went dry as I tried to remember all of Poppie’s tips for kissing over the years. She told me no guy wanted a girl with a mouth as wide as a guppy, who sucked his tongue with the force of a Dyson vacuum cleaner first time, or licked him to death like an overeager puppy. She’d told me to just purse my lips and let him lead and take control. Don’t slobber, don’t slobber, don’t slobber, I chanted to myself as he got closer and closer
Charlotte Fallowfield
Steerpike of the Many Problems,” said the Doctor. “What did you say they were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It’s as fickle as a fox. Ask me to name the third lateral bloodvessel from the extremity of my index finger that runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk to be found in the knuckles of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year, ha, ha, ha! – or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of frogs two minutes before they die of scabies – these things are no tax upon my memory, ha, ha, ha! But ask me to remember exactly what you said you problems were, a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly. Now why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?”“Because I never mentioned them,” said Steerpike.“That accounts for it,” said Prunesquallor. “That, no doubt, accounts for it.
Mervyn Peake
That's what they should teach us here. How girls' brains work... It would be more useful than divination, anyway...
J.K. Rowling
Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. Too-lateness is potentially every moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when it's no longer too late for anything. Perhaps, even, most times are too early for most things, and most of life has to go by before it's time for almost anything and too late for almost nothing. Nothing to lose, the present moment to gain, the integration with long-delayed Now.
Russell Hoban
Alex took a silent step closer to the kitchen door and watched unseen as willow spooned instant coffee into a pair of mugs.With another yawn, she scraped her hair off her face and stretched. She looked so entirely human, so drowsy and sleep-rumpled.For a moment, Alex just gazed at her, taking in her long tumble of hair, her wide green eyes and pixieish chin. Fleetingly, he imagined her eyes meeting his, wondering what she'd look like if she smiled
l.a weatherly
... [They] took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again, after death has stopped us all in its tracks.
Diane Setterfield
In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love.
Caryll Houselander
It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.
Idries Shah
That guy in the corner. Never tells the truth, as a matter of principle. Why answer a question, he says, if you can tell a good story instead?
Pete McCarthy
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
Ashleigh Brilliant
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "future perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
Douglas Adams
Hey, you’re not supposed to find our magnificent organs amusing.
Barbara Elsborg
Biological harm from electromagnetic interference (EMI) is the dirty secret of the electrical, electronics and wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation industries.
Steven Magee
It is clear that the protective functions of workplace health and safety have transferred to the workers through the process of corporate government deregulation and reduced funding of relevant government departments.
Steven Magee
Someone once said that Stephen Austin didn't like preachers at all. He swore that "one preacher could stir up more trouble than a dozen horse thieves." Matthew's Gospel reminds us that it is the role of a disciple of Jesus to stir up trouble by playing an active, resistant role in the struggle of good and evil, by resisting the ways of the world and its power bases – economic, religious, nationalistic, politic, military – which are most often in direct opposition to the ways of the Kingdom of God and the way of discipleship.
Megan McKenna
Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.
E.M. Forster
So prodigal was I of youth Forgetting I was young I worshipped dead men for their strength Forgetting I was strong.
Vita Sackville-West