Quotes by British Authors - Page 133

She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
Joseph Conrad
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell
Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.
Walter Scott
The truly terrible thing about the war spirit, about the fear and hate hysteria it generates, is that it forces us to think and talk and feel in terms of abstractions—those "communists" this time, those "fascists" last time. But those we are fighting and killing are people—men, women and children—not political, geographic or economic abstractions. They are, in the main, as decent and fearful and confused as we are. And they regard us as abstractions as much as we do them.
Sydney J. Harris
I thought: if I die, I hope I get reincarnated into a mosquito so I can bite that fucker kau-kau.
Zen Cho
A blown kiss is not a proper kiss. Hugs and kisses should be hugs and kisses, not breaths of air. I am tired of breaths of air and not enough hugs and kisses.
Claire King
Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.
Jasper Fforde
Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be acheived unless we first establish peace within our own minds. We can send so-called 'peacekeeping forces' into areas of conflict, but peace cannot be oppossed from the outside with guns. Only by creating peace within our own mind and helping others to do the same can we hope to achieve peace in this world.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die.Into the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.
Alfred Tennyson
I am longing to show him my love, but not by doing what is wrong
Gillian Shields
Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling. Think of those Galilean peasants.
Alfred North Whitehead
I love the stillness of a room, after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it's over, happy to relax and say, 'Now we are alone again.
Daphne du Maurier
No colour comes after black.
Idries Shah
But I don't think Art's an Einstein - he likes tugging ears, biting people and burping too much to be a genius.
Darren Shan
Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.
Leigh Hunt
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
C.S. Lewis
Don't write in to ask whether I would prefer Gingrich to Clinton. Ask, rather, whether Clinton prefers Gingrich to you. Go triangulate yourself.
Christopher Hitchens
Write what you want to write. That's the only advice a writer will ever need.
Chloe Thurlow
The span of life is waning fast Beware unthinking youth beware! Thy soul's eternity depends Upon the record moments bear!
Eliza Cook
Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
Tom Stoppard
Now that I have definitely begun to live I find myself more and more convinced that civilization with its trappings and artificialities is not so good as nature.
H.S. Ede
There was noise in the corridor outside Alice’s office; and though it was nothing of concern, they separated. Roger stood, fingers tucked into his waistcoat pockets, admiring prints on the wall that held no interest for him. The noise was Melanie, but her voice, a length of razor wire wrapped in a soufflé, eventually faded.
Andrew Barrett
Men spend their lives in anticipation in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other-it is our own.... We may lay in a stock of pleasures as we would lay in a stock of wine but if we defer the tasting of them too long we shall find that both are soured by age.
Charles Caleb Colton
Do you think you could stop crying for a minute? It makes conversation a bit difficult.
Vivien Alcock
Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are unwise if they choose to live there because the town is, perhaps even creditably, committed to recognising only professional success, and nothing else, to be of lasting value. The burdensome obligation imposed on all its inhabitants is therefore to present themselves as successes, because otherwise they forfeit their right to respect in that environment ... There is no place in that town for the "interesting failure" or for anyone who is not determined on a life that will be shaped in a upward-heading curve.
Julian Fellowes
Reach out for, then embrace your heart consciousness.
Steven Redhead
Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.
William Pitt
You are damaged and broken and unhinged. But so are shooting stars and comets.
Nikita Gill
The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law.
H.G.Wells
It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.
Hilaire Belloc
One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
Arthur Christopher Benson
No teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness.
A.S. Neill
Just as sometimes I wondered if Grandpa had ever existed, sometimes I wondered if I truly existed myself. As I was running, I could see myself from outside myself: a skinny girl with the flapping shorts and too- big a T-shirt, always watching the other girls at school, a girl in a pink bedroom sitting with a book propped on her knees, the words she was reading entering her mind, some sticking like gluey never to be forgotten, others disappearing instantly, I could remember everything and remember nothing. I would watch a movie and recall every scene as if I had written the script, then watch another movie another day and be unable to recall it at all.
Alice Jamieson
The terms that Sforza Cesarini offered Rossini, 400 Roman Scudi, were not ungenerous, though it must have been galling for Rossini to see the Figaro, Luigi Zamboni, getting almost twice as much, and the Almaviva, Manuel Garcia, being offered three times the amount. Of the first-night cast, only the 'altro buffo', Bartolomeo Botticelli, who played Bartolo, and the 'seconda donna', Elisabetta Lowselet, who played Berta, were paid less than the composer.
Richard Osborne
The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes imposs
Salman Rushdie
I can't be yours forever, Mab," I told her, the words flying into my mouth as if by magic. "I already belong to someone else. I belong to Alice!
Joseph Delaney
She squeezed her thighs together, desperate for relief. Aiming for completion without doing something so deliberate as touching herself. Look ma, no hands!
Kate Meader
How like God's love yours has been to me- so wise, so generous, and so unsparing!" exclaimed Pancratius. "Promise me one thing more- that is, that you will stay near to me to the end, and carry my last legacy to my mother.
Nicholas Wiseman
You never know. Maybe when we’re dreaming…we’re more lucid than when we are awake.
Katherine Angela Yeboah
The happiest people I have known in this world have been the Saints-and after these the men and women who get immediate and conscious enjoyment from little things.
Hugh Walpole
If the ravens leave the Tower, Britain will fall.
John Owen Theobald
I’d never seen a man cry before, only on TV. I’d never even seen Dad close to crying. Those tears looked so odd on you. It was like the strength of you just seemed to sap away. The surprise of it stopped me from being so scared.
Lucy Christopher
I close my eyes for a moment and open my inner eye. I stare at Pete, and the thing in his arms. Human. Cat. Human. Cat. No doubled vision: it's a cat, singular. A solitary diurnal ambush hunter with good hearing and binocular vision, and a predilection for biting the neck of its prey in half while disemboweling it with the scythe-like claws on its hind legs. Basically it's a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement.
Charlie Stross
Theist and atheist: The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler
People can and often do ignore or deny their common humanity with others, or deny, at least implicitly, that their common humanity commits them to sympathy or compassion for those less advantaged than themselves. Indeed, such an attitude towards one's fellows can be represented as tough, uncompromising, positively heroic: the supermen versus the wimps. But just as this ruthless world may be chosen - as it is chosen by the current rulers of the globalised neo-liberal market - so if may also be rejected.
David Smail
A dream business that doesn't make money is a living nightmare.
Habeeb Akande
There can be no return to prosperity while the government (of Ontario) believes that taking money from the people who have earned it and giving it away to the people who haven't in exchange for their votes and regardless of merit is the essence of fairness.
Conrad Black
Harry Potter is dead.
J.K. Rowling
But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself: 'Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end was hard work and self-denial?
Terry Pratchett
I no longer believe that the current education system is able to equip our children for a fast-moving future. Technology has evolved so rap-idly in the last five years that to put a child in an education system that was designed for a future that will most likely no longer exist for the majority, seems almost absurd.
Lehla Eldridge
The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative.Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young-man - all present still, preserved as fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died -what is there to be afra
Christopher Isherwood
Yes, cannibals. People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.
Doris Lessing
What worried him worst at the moment - for it is often little things that are hardest to stand - was that his lip was bleeding where they had hit him and he couldn't wipe the little trickle of blood away although it tickled him.
C.S. Lewis
Look, people, I’m announcing a new rule. It’s going to seem harsh. But it’s necessary.”The word “harsh” got almost everyone’s attention.“We can’t have people sitting around all day playing Wii and watching DVDs. We need people to start working in the fields. So, here’s the thing: everyone age seven or older has to put in three days per week picking fruit or veggies. Then Albert’s going to work with the whole question of freezing stuff that can be frozen, or otherwise preserving stuff.”There was dead silence. And blank stares.“What I’m saying is, tomorrow we’ll have two school buses ready to go. They hold about fifty kids each and we need to have them mostly full because we’re going to pick some melons and it’s a lot of work.”More blank stares.“Okay, let me make this simple: get your brothers and sisters and friends and anyone over age seven and be in the square tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”“But how about—?”“Just be there,” Sam said with less firmness than he’d intended. His frustration was draining away now, replaced by weariness and depression.“Just be there,” someone mimicked in a singsong voice.Sam closed his eyes, and for a moment he almost seemed to be asleep. Then he opened them again and managed a bleak smile. “Please. Be there,” he said quietly.He walked down the three steps and out of the church, knowing in his heart that few would answer his call.
Michael Grant
Sun of himself. All things are his moons.
Kate Tempest
Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea.
Terry Pratchett
You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?
Terry Pratchett
When you’re in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to last. Reading in Italian arouses a similar longing in me. I don’t want to die, because my death would mean the end of my discovery of the language. Because every day there will be a new word to learn. Thus true love can represent eternity.
Jhumpa Lahiri
As an innovator, you need to be aware of how traditions, habits and bias can act as barriers to accepting new ideas.
Max McKeown
All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.
Elizabeth Goudge