Quotes by British Authors - Page 174

The problem with heroes and villains is that it’s not always easy to tell which is which. Particularly when you are one.
Jessica Meats
Now we have travelled a hundred million steps from the Datum, we are finding life systems entirely unlike our own - and yet we still find war. Must it always be so?
Terry Pratchett
Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
Samuel Johnson
People in pain can be very self-destructive. And sometimes they pull in the people who are close to them, often without realizing.
Sara Barnard
I've got two neptunes here," said Harry after a while, frowning down at his piece of parchment, "that can't be right, can it?""Aaaaah," said Ron, imitating Professor Trelawney's mystical whisper, "when two neptunes appear in the sky, it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry..."Seamus and Dean, who were working nearby, sniggered loudly, though not loud enough to mask the excited squeals from Lavender Brown- "Oh Professor, look! I think I might've gotten an unexpected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?""It is Uranus, my dear," said Professor Trelawney, peering down at the chart."Can I get a look at Uranus too, Lavender?" said Ron.
J.K. Rowling
The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
Terry Pratchett
This is me being sad.Maybe you think I'm being happy in this picture. Really I'm being sad but pretending I'm being happy. I'm doing that because I think people won't like me if I look sad.
Michael Rosen
Man is willing to accept woman as an equal, as a man in skirts, as an angel, a devil, a baby-face, a machine, an instrument, a bosom, a womb, a pair of legs, a servant, an encyclopaedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the one thing he won’t accept her as, is a human being, a real human being of the feminine sex.
D.H. Lawrence
If there is a moral to this part of the story, and I distrust morals in the same way that I distrust beginnings, it is simply this: know that with which you deal.
Neil Gaiman
Moments of prayer intruded on by sloth cannot be made up. We may get experience, but we cannot get back the rich freshness and strength which were wrapped up in those moments.
Frederick W. Robertson
He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures.
Henry James
Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.
David Almond
Perhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means.
Mark Lawrence
It's love. But it's a different kind,""Doesn't make it any less love, though.
Patrick Ness
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
Winston S. Churchill
It's leviOsa, not levioSA!
J.K. Rowling
To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before.
Robert Graves
When by my solitary hearth I sit,When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.
John Keats
Knowing when you should weigh up your options, remain calm and not take everything at face value has certain benefitsEnding the day with with a peaceful soul is one...
Virginia Alison
There are, of course, the people who revolve around themselves--but I agree with you, she's not one of that kind. She's totally uninterested in herself. And yet she's got a strong character--there must be something. I thought at first it was her art--but it isn't. I've never met anyone so detached from life. That's dangerous.''Dangerous? What do you mean?''Well, you see--it must mean an obsession of some kind, and obsessions are always dangerous.
Agatha Christie
What manner of mind considers this holy estate [pregnancy] which women are privileged by the Almighty to attain as a slur upon the social conscience?
Grantly Dick-Read
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Charles Dickens
Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.
C.S. Lewis
Depths of Friendship...under fathoms deepof dark and bitter coldan eerie oscillationreverberated brash and bold...
Muse
Never stop. Never stop fighting. Never stop dreaming.
Tom Hiddleston
What God says is best, indeed is best, though all men in the world are against it. Seeing, then, that God prefers his religion; seeing God prefers a tender conscience; seeing they that make themselves fools for the kingdom of heaven are wisest; and that the poor man that loveth Christ is richer than the greatest man in the world that hates him: Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation.
John Bunyan
Causality is a pointless superstition. These days it would take more than one book to persuade anyone of that.
Arif Ahmed
There was a wicked ole witch once called Black Aliss. She was an unholy terror. There's never been one worse or more powerful. Until now. Because I could spit in her eye and steal her teeth, see. Because she didn't know Right from Wrong, so she got all twisted up, and that was the end of her."The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong, you can't choose Wrong. You just can't do it and live. So.. if I was a bad witch I could make Mister Salzella's muscles turn against his bones and break them where he stood... if I was bad. I could do things inside his head, change the shape he thinks he is, and he'd be down on what had been his knees and begging to be turned into a frog... if I was bad. I could leave him with a mind like a scrambled egg, listening to colors and hearing smells...if I was bad. Oh yes." There was another sigh, deeper and more heartfelt."But I can't do none of that stuff. That wouldn't be Right."She gave a deprecating little chuckle. And if Nanny Ogg had been listening, she would have resolved as follows: that no maddened cackle from Black Aliss of infamous memory, no evil little giggle from some crazed Vampyre whose morals were worse than his spelling, no side-splitting guffaw from the most inventive torturer, was quite so unnerving as a happy little chuckle from a Granny Weatherwax about to do what's best.
Terry Pratchett
What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.
Natasha Pulley
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
C.S. Lewis
There is no creature so perfect in wisdom and knowledge but may learn something for time present, and to come, by times past.
John Robinson
The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.
Jasper Fforde
A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life.
Virginia Woolf
Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.
Terry Pratchett
Geography is about maps But biography is about chaps.
E.C. Bentley
I said, 'I have heard people talk about war as if it was a very fine thing.' Ah!' said [Captain], 'I should think they never saw it. No doubt it is very fine when there is no enemy, when it is just exercise and parade, and sham-fight. Yes, it is very fine then; but when thousands of good brave men and horses are killed, or crippled for life, it has a very different look.' Do you know what they fought about?' said I. No,' he said, 'that is more than a horse can understand, but the enemy must have been awfully wicked people, if it was right to go all that way over the sea on purpose to kill them.
Anna Sewell
The official erasure of any existence before enslavement – as if black Americans did not exist before the yolk and the chains and whip – has always created a passion for us.Black people need to find out. We have to find out Who We Are and Where We Come From.
Bonnie Greer
Did people... really kiss like that? She had had NO idea. She had imagined being kissed, and in her imagination she had been swept away by the sheer romance of the meeting of lips. In her naivete she had not considered the possibility that a kiss, as a prelude to sexual activity, might have powerful effects on parts of her body, in fact, even parts she had been only half aware of possessing. She ached and throbbed in all sorts of unfamiliar places
Mary Balogh
I learned a long, long time ago, that I could accomplish things in this place we call reality and yet still spend most of my time in the better reality of my mind.
Kevin Walker
All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.
Virginia Woolf
A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.
A.A. Milne
People are often dismissive of librarians and libraries....But isn't that where the best stories are kept? Hidden away on the library bookshelves, lost and forgotten, waiting, waiting, until someone like me comes along, and wants to borrow them.
Justine Picardie
How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.
Virginia Woolf
There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, now.
Neil Gaiman
And I decided it really was true after all. You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.
Joanna Cannon
She didn't do people, dammit. She did books. A world of difference
Vic James
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you fill her above the brim with love of herself all that runs over will be yours.
Charles Caleb Colton
I shouldn't have survived - it was my destiny to die - even Dumbledore thought so - and yet i lived. I beat Voldemort. All these people - all these people - my parents, Fred, the Fallen Fifty - and it's me that gets to live? how is that? All this damage - and it's my fault.
Jack Thorne
You will get exactly what you deserve Polly,” comes the firm reply, “you can trust me on that… But if you do – trust me I mean – I promise you an unparalleled climax.” She pauses, gazing deep into my frightened green eyes. “It’s your call Polly, all yours.”I allow my aching body to decide for me.“Punish me please, mistress,” I say in a very small voice.
Felicity Brandon
Wow, that is so deep.'He meant it, of course.'You're really real,' he added breathily. 'Say something else.'I decided he wasn't worth punching, and walked away.
Claire North
Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.
Idries Shah
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Winston S. Churchill
It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves that it would be an error to suppose that they did not believe in the continuance of individual existence after death by a ghostly simulacrum of life. Nay, I think it would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am not aware that there is anything to show that they thought the existence of the souls of the dead in Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not seem to have conceived that the condition of the souls in Sheol was in any way affected by their conduct in life. If there was immortality, there was no state of retribution in their theology. Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to him in Sheol.
Thomas Henry Huxley
It wouldn't do to go mixing up the present and the past, and cutting bits out of one to fit into the other.
E Nesbit
The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.
William Wilberforce
It must be wonderful to be you, Dominic, and know that you alone have shaped yourself. It must be even more wonderful for other people, your mother and even God Himself for all I know, to know that. It absolves them of a terrible responsibility.
Jayne Bauling
Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated
Alan W. Watts
We're supposed to speak from the heart in what we wear. We have to find capsule wardrobes.
Caitlin Moran
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
Terry Pratchett
Do the things I never did. Swear. Wear neon colours. Skydive. Climb fences. Ride horses naked. Say obscene things. Make love. Shout at people when they piss you off. Toot your horn. Scream. Become tainted and be proud of it. It’s who you are. You came into this world naked and blank, like a canvass, but I want you to go screaming out of it covered in every colour of the rainbow.
Sarah Michelle Lynch