Quotes by British Authors - Page 125

(Streets of Sorrow)Oh, farewell you streets of sorrowOh, farewell you streets of painI'll not return to feel more sorrowThrough the years I've lived through terrorAnd in the darkened streets, the painOh, how I long to find some solaceIn my mind, I curse the strainSo, farewell, you streets of sorrowAnd, farewell, you streets of pain
The Pogues
Love, like everything else, exists in a spectrum. Love of another, love of the world, love of God, all these loves are really one love in different degrees of light and density.
Roger Housden
I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
Terry Pratchett
Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently.
Jasper Fforde
Whatever it is that you think you have discovered. You must forget it.
Diane Samuels
My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical.
Richard Dawkins
External relationships seem to have been emptied by a massive withdrawal of the real libidinal self. Effective mental activity has disappeared into a hidden inner world; the patient's conscious ego is emptied of vital feeling and action, and seems to have become unreal. You may catch glimpses of intense activity going on in the inner world through dreams and fantasies, but the patient's conscious ego merely reports these as if it were a neutral observer not personally involved in the inner drama of which it is a detached spectator. The attitude to the outer world is the same: non-involvement and observation at a distance without any feeling, like that of a press reporter describing a social gathering of which he is not a part, in which he has no personal interest, and by which he is bored. Such activity as is carried on may appear to be mechanical. When a schizoid state supervenes, the conscious ego appears to be in a state of suspended animation in between two worlds, internal and external, and having no real relationships with either of them. It has decreed an emotional and impulsive standstill, on the basis of keeping out of effective range and being unmoved.
Harry Guntrip
I knew I could do it all this time,” said Harry, “Because I'd already done it... does that make sense?
J.K. Rowling
People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.
C.S. Lewis
Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most self-contained in their daily lives.
Thomas Hardy
Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives.
Nick Harkaway
War hath no fury like a noncombatant.
C.E. Montague
What makes you a Man? In My opinion it is the same thing that makes you a woman. It's what makes us all who we are. The capacity to care. If you stop caring, you stop being. The measure of anyone is determined by their capacity to care.
Tim Dutton
The more science discovers and the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out.
Aldous Huxley
How in the name of Merlin's pants have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?
J.K. Rowling
This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.
Neil Gaiman
This is a rumour-filled society and if people want to sit around and talk about whom I've dated, then I'd say they have a lot of spare time and should consider other topics. Or masturbation. - Johnny Depp
Nigel Goodall
Greenspan advised the American people to buy - he repeated the old mantra: 'spending is patriotic'. He also managed to convince them that if they did not have the money, that shouldn't stop them. They would 'pay later'. To a certain extent he was correct, we are all having to 'pay later'... we may even never stop paying.
Gilad Atzmon
But if you cross me again Akil, so-help-me, I’ll find a way to kill you this time.”His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he’d accepted a challenge I didn’t even know I’d laid down. “I’d expect nothing less.” Demons; only they can get a cheap thrill from a death threat.
Pippa DaCosta
The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the book'd caught my attention, 'it's about the history of opticians. What are you about?
David Mitchell
Karakarof spat onto the ground at Dumbledore's feet. In one swift movement, Hagrid seized the front of Karkaroff's furs, lifted him into the air, and slammed him against a nearby tree.
J.K. Rowling
In those first hours after he drowned, when the catastrophe was still confined to Calabash beach, and to Jake, Joe and me, its speed was impossible to reconcile with its scale. Nothing so big could happen this fast; it defied the laws of physics, it could not be true. Death is too much for the mind to register in a matter of minutes; the incalculable magnitude can only be absorbed by increment, day by day. As each day allows a new glimpse of its immensity, and the aftershock extends beyond the beach to reach hundreds of people all over the world, my comprehension slowly expands until its dimensions resemble a more accurate impression of the truth. But the bigger his death grows, the more inconceivable it becomes. It feels like an ambitious piece of performance art; a work of fiction, not real life. How strange that the truth of my own situation should be so much clearer to everybody else.
Decca Aitkenhead
Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.
Virginia Woolf
The bicycle saves my life every day. If you've ever experienced a moment of awe or freedom on a bicycle; if you've ever taken flight from sadness to the rhythm of two spinning wheels, or felt the resurgence of hope pedalling to the top of a hill with the dew of effort on your forehead; if you've ever wondered, swooping down bird-like down a long hill, if the world was standing still; if you have ever, just once, sat on a bicycle with a singing heart and felt like an ordinary human touching the gods, then we share something fundamental. We know it's all about the bike.
Robert Penn
The more you realize, the more you realize there is nothing to realize. The idea that there's somewhere we have got to get to, and something we have to attain, is our basic delusion.
Tenzin Palmo
We love music deeply, but why? Put simply: music makes lives, shapes lives, expresses all shades and stages of life - and even saves lives.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
The exoneration of the mass. No one voice is to blame. But his voice was there.
Ian McDonald
The only wrong way to read the Bible is to not read it at all.
Elizabeth George
We will continue to march, even if everything shatters, because today Germany hears us, and tomorrow, the whole world. And because of the Great War, the world lies in ruins, but devil may care, we build it up again.
Rhidian Brook
I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE!""You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.
J.K. Rowling
Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.
Alfred North Whitehead
Being honest may not get you a lot of friends it’ll get you the right ones
John Lennon
If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?
Douglas Adams
Why you like photography so much? Because it's just the camera and me showing everyone else what we can see. It's telling stories.
Lindsey Kelk
To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
Tahir Shah
It's a weapon, I understand?""In the wrong hands, all tools are weapons. In the right hands, everything is a weapon, or nothing is.
Neil Gaiman
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
Tom Stoppard
It's not the having it's the getting.
Elizabeth Taylor
Healthy and non-shaming mirroring is an important part of the process. We can gain this from a highly emotionally intelligent and effective peer group that has our best interests at heart.
Christopher Dines
Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.
Idries Shah
Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying
Salman Rushdie
She was an experimental child but compassionate with it.
Joe Cawley
Insecure people put others down to raise themselves up.
Habeeb Akande
An echo from the past when, innocentWe looked upon the present with delightAnd doubted not the future would be kinderAnd never knew the loneliness of night.
Noël Coward
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Samuel Johnson
To look after my body, to pay it respect. To question my mind, which doesn't understand half as much as it thinks it does. To understand that the time spent in the gap between the endless stories we tell ourselves is the present.These days, I care more about being peaceful and happy than about being in love. I'm not sure love is love if it consumes you, if it dominates your thoughts.
Olivia Gagan
From watching Silvia, I'd learned that one of the worst things about being ill is that most people find your suffering opaque. With this sadness it was different. I felt that I needed to nurture and protect it from people's understanding. I wanted Susy's sympathy because I wanted comfort and to feel less alone, and yet I also didn't want it—I didn't want my personal grief to be part of something universal right then.
Olivia Sudjic
If I were to go back in time with the knowledge that I have today about Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), I would invest the money into changing the electrical characteristics of my body and exhaust that route first, particularly if no one else in the home is showing the condition. If everyone is sick in the home, it is probably an environmental issue that warrants expense on changing the environmental factors.
Steven Magee
You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Don't know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.
Elizabeth Wein
Wizards don’t believe in gods. They didn’t deny their existence, of course. They just didn’t believe. It was nothing personal; they weren’t actually rude about it. Gods were a visible part of narrativium that made things work, that gave the world its purpose. It was just that they were best avoided close up.
Terry Pratchett
Work on what is real rather than worry about what is unreal.
Elizabeth George
Abnormal radiation exposure and oxygen starvation teaches you that reality is just a perception that is derived from your immediate environmental conditions.
Steven Magee
Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due!Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew.That ever upon the topment roof our banner in India blew.
Alfred Tennyson
The hamster-powered hat is the same as any other hat. It keeps your head warm and looks smart,' the inventor said. 'The hamster generates heat by running on the wheel. If you get a big enough hamster, it will keep your whole face warm.
Mark Jackman
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play
John Cleese
By digitizing a traditionally analog business model or process, we're effectively turning it into bits and atoms and enabling an infinite variety of possibilities.
Nicholas D. Evans
As the social matrix becomes increasingly subject to rapid fluctuations, throwing out anchors into a collectivised past becomes more prominent than movement into a future. The desire to establish a core identity within the profusion of styles has led to image building becoming an industry in itself—as much reflected by the tactics of political groups and corporate bodies, as in the fetishistic scramble for designer labels and trendy occult symbols. Identity has, therefore, become another commodity to be traded in the marketplace. The gulf between objective icons and the Illusory has widened to such an extent that illusions have come to equal value.
Phil Hine
The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.
Malcolm Gladwell