Quotes by British Authors - Page 145

When you've been everywhere, tried it all and done it all, what's left is the exploration of self, intellectually and sexually, through curiosity and erotica.
Chloe Thurlow
A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.
Max McKeown
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Beat me, hurt me, fight me and I’ll bounce back, but be nice to me? I folded quicker than a banker in a high-stakes poker game.
Pippa DaCosta
Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.We sit beside the headstone thus,And wish that name were carved for us.The moss reprints more tenderlyThe hard types of the mason's knife,As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's lifeWith which we're tired, my heart and I ....In this abundant earth no doubtIs little room for things worn out:Disdain them, break them, throw them by!And if before the days grew roughWe once were loved, used, - well enough,I think, we've fared, my heart and I.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
Be lucky, Xander, and be brave. You will find that bravery and luck are often bedfellows.
David Gemmell
She actually said with an emotion that she seldom let appear, "Let me come with you," and he laughed. He meant yes or no - either perhaps. But it was not his meaning - it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said, Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don't care. He turned on her cheek the heat of love, its horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her...
Virginia Woolf
One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to beloved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannotcleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have neverloved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughtstoo much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.
Elizabeth Gaskell
And, when the revolutionary cries that he is fighting for ‘freedom’, be sure to go running away from him just as fast as you can, for you can be damned certain he’s fighting for the freedom to tell you what to do.
Neal Asher
How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny sefishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they are not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.
G.K. Chesterton
Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization. Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.
Jo Walton
She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?' 'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere.
Agatha Christie
They were pleased to eat more Nazis, although nervous about too many disappearances being noticed. More troubling, however, was the flavor. Nazis were nearly indigestible. The taste of hate was hard to swallow.
Sarah Jane Stratford
The inspector had interviewed boys before, boys from the poorest parts of town. He had the habit of not specifying "mam" or "dad" or even "parents." They were things he knew not every child possessed and so he was careful.
Sylvia Waugh
There is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern and a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscape of his dreams; the sort of world he would like to make or in which he would like to wander, the strange flora and fauna, his own secret planet, the sort of thing he likes to think about. This general atmosphere, and pattern or a structure of growth, governs all his creations, however varied.
G.K. Chesterton
Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.
John Keats
The fusty showman fumbles, must Fit in a particle of dustThe universe, for fear it gainIts freedom from my cube of brain.Yet dust bears seeds that grow to graceBehind my crude-striped wooden faceAs I, a puppet tinsel-pinkLeap on my springs, learn how to think—Till like the trembling golden stalkOf some long-petalled star, I walkThrough the dark heavens, and the dewFalls on my eyes and sense thrills through.
Edith Sitwell
As food nourishes the body, beauty nourishes the spirit.
Ginger Gilmour
I feel ill," [Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die.
Diana Wynne Jones
A book for children, like the myths and folktales that tend to slide into it, is really a blueprint for dealing with life. For that reason, it might have a happy ending, because nobody ever solved a problem while believing it was hopeless. It might put the aims and the solution unrealistically high – in the same way that folktales tend to be about kings and queens – but this is because it is better to aim for the moon and get halfway there than just to aim for the roof and get halfway upstairs.
Diana Wynne Jones
If you resolve to give up smoking drinking and loving you don't actually live longer it just seems longer.
Clement Freud
Finding herself on the way to the village center again, she pulled over, intending to negotiate a three-point turn. The cottage was slightly out of the village, so she needed to get back onto the opposite side of the road and go back up the hill. Glancing over Hannah’s instructions again, she swung the car to the right—straight into the path of a motorcyclist.What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. The rider tried to stop but couldn’t do so in time, although he did manage to avoid hitting her car. As he turned his handlebars hard to the right, his tires lost grip on the wet road and he flew off, sliding some way before coming to a halt.Layla sat motionless in her car, paralyzed temporarily by the shock. At last she managed to galvanize herself into action and fumbled for the door handle, her shaking hands making it hard to get a grip. When the door finally opened, another dilemma hit. What if she couldn’t stand? Her legs felt like jelly, surely they wouldn’t support her. Forcing herself upward, she was relieved to discover they held firm. Once she was sure they would continue to do so, she bolted over to where the biker lay, placed one hand on his soaking leather-clad shoulder and said, “Are you okay?”“No, I’m not bloody okay!” he replied, a pair of bright blue eyes meeting hers as he lifted his visor. “I’m a bit bruised and battered as it goes.”Despite his belligerent words, relief flooded through her: he wasn’t dead!“Oh, I’m so glad,” she said, letting out a huge sigh.“Glad?” he said, sitting up now and brushing the mud and leaves off his left arm. “Charming.”“Oh, no, no,” she stuttered, realizing what she’d just said. “I’m not glad that I knocked you over. I’m glad you’re alive.”“Only just, I think,” he replied, needing a helping hand to stand up.“Can I give you a lift somewhere, take you to the nearest hospital?”“The nearest hospital? That would be in Bodmin, I think, about fifteen miles from here. I don’t fancy driving fifteen miles with you behind the wheel.”Feeling a little indignant now, Layla replied, “I’m actually a very good driver, thank you. You’re the first accident I’ve ever had.”“Lucky me,” he replied sarcastically.
Shani Struthers
When today fails to offer the justification for hope, tomorrow becomes the only grail worth pursuing.
Christopher Bigsby
Little Maiden Encounters FearDeepest regions walked she therelittle maiden sweet and fairventured far from the pathnever a whispernever a laugh...
Muse
Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has.
Freya Stark
If you are not filled with overflowing love, compassion and goodwill for all creatures living wild in nature, You will never know true happiness.
Paul Oxton
I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation.
Daniel Radcliffe
Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.
Elizabeth Goudge
No, Roger had not seen the funny side. But there had been a moment when, after looking at his watch, he had thought: I can remember when Christmas morning would start at about half past ten with a glass of Buck's Fizz in bed. Now it begins at half past five, with a test of my fine motor skills and ability to read Korean.
John Lanchester
Almighty God unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no Secrets are hid: clense the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy holy spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnifie thy holy Name through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Church of England
it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
G.K. Chesterton
The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
C.S. Lewis
Tomorrow and tomorrow come creeping in and always will. We're fools trapped in a mechanism of our own unconscious making. Shadows strutting and fretting for one brief hour upon a stage, then heard no more. I'll weep an ocean in my heart, if the world would give me time. But not now.
David Hewson
Wouldn’t you rather play chess, Ma’am?....It’s less destructive of clothes.
Rowena Cherry
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! YOU'VE READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEWSPAPERS! NOW, SHUDDER AS YOU OBSERVE, BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES, THAT MOST RAREAND RAGIC OF NATURE'S MIS
Alan Moore
Say this city has ten million souls,Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
W.H. Auden
Because," she said, "when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.
Neil Gaiman
If I am looking for inspiration, then I read the religious scriptures.
Steven Magee
Then we still have time!” I gasp. “It’s not too late. We know what he’s going to do. We’ll return to the cave and figh
Darren Shan
Besides, immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control things.
E.L. James
Man had created God in his own image, not the other way around. He had done it through sheer terror, and who could blame him? Unfortunately he had made too good a job. The god he had invented was just as cruel and careless as man himself. Not a deity to whom one should seriously address a prayer.
Richard Herley
People trust their eyes above all else - but most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see; not what is really there
Zoë Marriott
When I was young I was sure of everything in a few years having been mistaken a thousand times I was not half so sure of most things as I was before at present I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed.
John Wesley
Very few Englishmen ever ask a woman anything about themselves. They choose instead to lecture their dinner neighbors on a new and better route to the M5, or to praise their own professional achievements. So is a man does express any curiosity about a woman sitting next to him, about her feelings, about the life she is leading, she will generally tell him anything he cares to know.
Julian Fellowes
All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask:‘What is truth?’ So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgement-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world.
G.K. Chesterton
The queers could almost pass for the same species as the straights.
Liz Kessler
The best prayers have often more groans than words.
John Bunyan
Hold on to your friends.Resist - or move onBe mad, be rashSmoke and explodeSell all of your clothesJust bear in mind:There just might come a timeWhen you need some friends
Morrissey
Because his [Damien Hirst] art is idea art - art drawn on the back of cigarette packets and beer mats, roughed out in airport departure lounges and the back of the taxis, usually delegated to and carried by others - this leaves Damien a lot of time for what might loosely be called socializing. Hanging around.
Gordon Burn
I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high.
Christopher Hitchens
As a child I had been taught to say my prayers at the start of every day, and so it did not seem an odd thing for me to stand out in the field and say "Oh God whatever happens today let it be under your perfect control.
John Masters
So,” said Zia, “you’re gonna eat your way through the whole universe, top to bottom. And then what?
Adam Christopher
You can live a lifetime and at the end of it know more about other people than you know about yourself.
Beryl Markham
I shall ever despise the man who can be gratified by the passion which he never wished to inspire, nor solicited the avowal of.
Jane Austen
He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.
Douglas Adams
Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.
Idries Shah
Only ever doing what feels comfortable is a form of suicide.
Oli Anderson
She had forced herself to learn to read – picked up bits and pieces, here and there, from the very few teachers who had been patient with her; from looking at words while out and about; from television, and from friends. And to avoid the shouting and drug-induced moaning, and the row of male visitors her mum would entertain, she would barricade herself in her room – there'd been no lock – and lose herself in books.
Dianna Hardy
At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.
Ian McEwan
All good people agree, And all good people say,All nice people, like Us, are We And every one else is They:But if you cross over the sea, Instead of over the way,You may end by (think of it!) looking on We As only a sort of They!
Rudyard Kipling