Quotes by British Authors - Page 127

Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis.
James Agate
HereIt's like the song of a family where everything's always all right, it's a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it's a song that'll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that's broken, it fixes.
Patrick Ness
By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power.
Julian Huxley
One can't reason away regret-it's a bit like falling in love, falling into regret.
Graham Greene
As long as the forest stood the Tchetchens were unconquerable... and it is literally the fact that they were beaten in the long run not by the sword but by the axe.
John F. Baddeley
If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.
Stephen Clarke
Page 158: 'Architecture is team work,' said Sinan. 'Apprenticeship is not.''Why don't you want us to look at each other's drawings? ' Jahan once asked.'Because you'll compare. If you think you are better than the others, you'll be poisoned by hubris. If you think another's better, poisoned by envy. Either way, it is poison.
Elif Şafak
Naboo: "You've read all the books, but when it comes to the crunch, where are you?"Saboo: "The crunch! How dare you speak to me of the crunch? You know nothing of the crunch. You've never even been to the crunch!"Naboo: "Been there once."Saboo: "Oh, a little day trip 'round the crunch, we can all go there as tourists. 'Ooh, that's a bit of crunch-'"Naboo: "Shut it!
Julian Barratt
It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored climate that seem to me the happiest but those in which a long stroke of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.
T.S Eliot
Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.
Jane Austen
Well sir, if things are real, they're there all the time"Are they?
C.S. Lewis
Who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn't that you don't feel motivated; it's that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.
Oliver Burkeman
Vanity's contribution to Fiction in general was an abundance of cheap labour and the occasional blockbuster, which was accepted into Fiction with an apologetic 'gosh, don't know how that happened'.
Jasper Fforde
You don’t approve?” Joan asked, picking up on Delphine’s tone. “Their stories were for themselves, not the Mirrors.”“What do you mean?” said Bea.“Certainly sometimes a good little character would find a lamp, and would not be so corrupted by the strangely endless possibilities of three wishes that they ended up causing more harm than they ever imagined. Those stories fostered belief, they were retold, certainly; but they were few and far between. Most of the genie’s tales showed the characters exactly who they really were, not when they were despised and degraded, not when they’d reached the gutter and been given licence to look at the stars. No, the genies showed them who they were when they were invincible. The characters, they try to forget stories like that.
F.D. Lee
It would not do to be Lord of a universe inhabited solely by serfs.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Hatred is so much easier to win than love - and so much harder to get rid of.
Enid Blyton
When you are in your twenties, if even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become.
Julian Barnes
And after that, and also for each word, there should be sentences that show the twists and turns of meanings—the way almost every word slips in its silvery, fishlike way, weaving this way and that, adding subtleties of nuance to itself, and then perhaps shedding them as public mood dictates.
Simon Winchester
We will never understand our world until we have come to terms with its future: it is the age in which we live. The Cold War depended upon internal division in order to maintain itself. Behind its various feints, games and strategies lay a perception of behavior as a form of enforced conformity. People would only do what they were prompted to do. This was the thinking that held the lonely crowd together, briefly connecting the forward thrust of material progress with the broader evolutionary curve.
Ken Hollings
People don't always tell you what they are thinking. They just see to it that you don't advance in life.
Anthony Hopkins
To recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersections of the times--of our time and God's time, of the then, and the now, and the not yet--is to understand how those emotions are to be held within the rhythm of a life lived in God's presence.
N.T. Wright
Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.
J.I. Packer
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and elevated opinions.
Christopher Henry Dawson
I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual
Virginia Woolf
A sneeze can never be to far away
Benny Bellamacina
One passion leads to another. It's passion that makes the wheels of life turn, passion for work, passion for pleasure, passion for passion.
Chloe Thurlow
In each moment you are nurturing or damaging your relationship with yourself.
Sam Owen
But of course these conjectures as to why God does what He does are probably of no more value than my dog's ideas of what I am up to when I sit and read.
C.S. Lewis
Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have heard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion. And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, the HIgh King above all high kings in Narnia. But after one glance at the Lion's face he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn't say anything but then he didn't want to say anything, and he knew he needn't say anything.The High King above all kings stooped towards him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.
C.S. Lewis
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that.
C.S. Lewis
All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.” “There is correct English: that is not slang.” “I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.
George Eliot
I bundled in my own blanket and reflected on the strange and somewhat unexpected friendship that was slowly developing between Davin and myself. It was clear to me that he needed a friend, but for reasons unknown to me, thought that it was better for him to be alone.
J.M. Richards
Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung.
Christopher Hitchens
What you focus upon for the future has potential to transpire.
Steven Redhead
We were immortal, did you know that? Did you feel it like me? We had the world at our feet and we were going to live forever. Then came life – growing inside you – and I became mortal.
Dianna Hardy
Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.
Neil Gaiman
Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment.
Karen Armstrong
Men and women find all sorts of ways to be together, all sorts of ways. Yours was high and dangerous. Most of us stay on the lower paths.
Josephine Hart
So it's off with the shellsuit and on with the Armanis,Bring out the champagne and the caviar sarnies
Roger McGough
Tears blurred her vision as she leaned over him. His mouth was surely made for smiling. For laughing. For kissing. Grief welled up along with the feeling that he might never do any of those things again.She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his. They were cool and unresponsive.Then they parted.She jerked back, saw his eyes flutter open.“Don’t stop now,” he whispered.
Elena Greene
The thrust of continuous action is the firewood which fuels motivation.
Steve Backley
The prose,” Robespierre said. “It’s so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style.
Hilary Mantel
People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly.
Banksy
Confident people tend to evaluate their opinions alongside those of others and then follow their intuition.
Sam Owen
Death Valley wasn't dead at all. It was asleep. It was simply waiting for the conditions of growth. When the conditions came, life returned to the heart of Death Valley.Human beings and human communities are the same. We need the right conditions for growth, in our schools, businesses, and communities, and in our individual lives. If the conditions are right, people grown in synergy with the people around them and the environments they create. If the conditions are poor, people protect themselves and their anxieties from neighbors and the world. Some of the elements of our growth are inside us. They include the need to develop our unique natural aptitudes and personal passions. Finding and nurturing them is the surest way to ensure our growth and fulfillment a as individuals.
Ken Robinson
Here's something for you to remember; you might have been born into money, but you came out of a vagina the same as everyone else. Popping out of one that's rich doesn't make you anything but lucky, or susceptible to being stuck your own arse. Whichever.
Suzanne Wright
Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops…I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.
Chris Cleave
You will not be here--I shall not be here--much lo
A.S. Byatt
I got the blues thinking of the future so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.
D.H. Lawrence
Human beings do terrible things to each other and the tragic thing about it all is the way the remembrance of past hurt can rob us of our future and become the narrative of our lives.
Richard Holloway
However cozy things seemed, the facts of life were the same. You couldn't escape death: It would get us all in the end.
Rachel Ward
That very breath wherewith they utter their complaints is a blessing and a fundamental one too for if God would withdraw that they were incapable of whatsoever else either have or desire.
Richard Allestree
The future is something which every one reaches at the rate of sixty miles an hour whatever he does whoever he is.
C.S. Lewis
Now that he's gone, I feel like I'm a senior citizen who gave away her life savings over the phone. And this is the crux: I never in my life believed in someone as much as I believed in him. The shame is overwhelming.
Emma Forrest
Most people would die sooner than think in fact they do.
Bertrand Russell
A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.
Christopher Wren
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too.
Alain de Botton
Storms are relentless and unforgiving. You know it's there, you feel it surrounding you, threatening to consume you should you dare to look, dare to behold the captivating wonder...Yet, fear grips. For although you know that it could swallow you whole and rip you to shreds, if you do not, eventually, the storm will dissipate, leaving you trembling and empty...We storms know this...
Virginia Alison
The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.
Christopher Hitchens
Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.
Patrick Ness