Quotes by British Authors - Page 18

Nothing is more conservative than a bacterium.
Nick Lane
Whether or not the fame of Gilgamesh of Uruk had reached the Aegean – and the idea is attractive – there can be no doubt that it was as great as that of any other hero. In time his name became so much a household word that jokes and forgeries were fathered onto it, as in a popular fraud that survives on eighth-century B.C. tablets which perhaps themselves copy an older text. This is a letter supposed to be written by Gilgamesh to some other king, with commands that he should send improbable quantities of livestock and metals, along with gold and precious stones for an amulet for Enkidu, which would weigh no less that thirty pounds. The joke must have been well received, for it survives in four copies, all from Sultantepe.
N.K. Sandars
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
Walter Bagehot
If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing unmanageable. If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same again.
Elif Shafak
Adapt or perish now as ever is nature's inexorable imperative.
H.G.Wells
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 or scrub the floor.
D.H. Lawrence
Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.
Charlotte Brontë
The Pythagoreans... were fascinated by certain specific ratios, ...The Greeks knew these as the 'golden' proportion and the 'perfect' proportion respectively. They may well have been learned from the Babylonians by Pythagoras himself after having been taken prisoner in Egypt. Ratios lay at the heart of the Pythagorean theory of music.
Graham Flegg
The best sleep imaginable is sleeping in your dreams
Dean Cavanagh
I want to be a Renaissance Woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I just want to do everything.
Emma Watson
Drinking is fun! It makes me feel horrible and sexy!
Warren Ellis
I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, “Man is the measure”, and I went, and after many visits I found an opening.
E.M. Forster
If there is no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know.
Lewis Carroll
I still can't believe it . . . him comin' here everyday, nobody realizin'. Still, that's life: lotta stuff happens under the waterline.
Alan Moore
There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed accoss the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own.
Terry Pratchett
A little work a little play To keep us going - and so good-day!
George du Maurier
God values Christian character, which shines in positive, outward conduct. Fashion your heart after Jesus.
Elizabeth George
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
Emotions embarassed her except when she sang. My dad said that was exactly why she sang.
Sarah Winman
Never do anything as though you are a professional armature
Diane Shawe
Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.
Bruce Chatwin
Love yourself enough to give what matters every chance of working by communicating as well as you possibly can, and trying for as long as you wish.
Jay Woodman
I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
Robert Graves
How's the blood-stream, my dear, invaluable little woman? How's the blood-stream?"..."It's quite comfortable, sir...I think, sir, thank yo
Mervyn Peake
History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past
Hilary Mantel
She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.
Jane Austen
The important thing is somehow to begin.
Henry Moore
Our love is like a flower.First you need to plant the seeds.Then you give it love, water and nutrients.The you watch it grow and grow.And finally it blossoms to become you.
Anthony T.Hincks
When you become a father, it changes you." Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. "You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with.
Mark Lawrence
Caine tried to roll to his feet, but something was jabbing him in the crouch. He shook off the stars and saw Edilio standing over him. Edilio had the business end of his automatic rifle in a very sensitive place. "If you move, Caine, I will shoot your balls off," Edilio said. "Toto?" "He will," Toto said, "Although he's not sure it will be just your balls.
Michael Grant
Better to be without logic than without feeling.
Charlotte Brontë
Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
Idries Shah
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other men, whose techniques he absorbs during the first twenty years of his life. He may then perhaps do a little research of his own and make a very few discoveries which are passed on to other men. From this point of view the search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than by individuals.
Alan Turing
Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors...
Joseph Conrad
A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless.
John Fowles
When our embarrassment level is exceeded by our desperation level, we are a good candidate for God's grace.
Peter Lord
Men and boys are constantly portrayed as predatory, sexist, their sense of humour is vilified and their behaviour is regarded as unacceptable. Factor in the constant diet we are fed of men as perpetrators of rape, murder and domestic violence. Boys must wonder whether they will ever be able to do anything right. This must make it painfully difficult for young men and women to build up relations based on honesty, love and trust.
Belinda Brown
Guys, he’s hurt bad.”The blonde scrambled to him. She tore the wounded boy’s shirt open. A river of blood ran down his chest.“Oh, God, no,” the blonde cried.Lana pushed her aside and laid a hand against the pumping wound. “He’ll live,” Lana said. “I’ll fix him.”“What do you mean, you’ll fix him?” the blonde demanded. “We need stitches, we need a doctor. Look at how he’s bleeding.”Lana said, “What’s your name?”“Astrid, what does it matter? He’s…” She stopped talking then and leaned in close to see. “The bloodflow is slowing.”“Yeah. I noticed that, too,” Lana said dryly. “Relax. He’ll be fine. In fact…” She tilted her head to get a better look at him. “In fact, I’ll bet when he’s not covered in blood, he’s cute. Your boyfriend?”“That’s not what it’s about,” Astrid snapped. Then, in a low voice, like she didn’t want the others to hear, she said, “Kind of.
Michael Grant
There is but one task for all --One life for each to give.What stands if Freedom
Rudyard Kipling
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.
Charlotte Brontë
Innocence is a kind of insanity
Graham Greene
Normalness leads to sadness.
Phil Lester
You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.
Eric Liddell
Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed, the way that a striated stone tumbled in a river feels irreducible, the way that this netsuke of a fox has become little more than a memory of a nose and a tail. But it also seems additive, in the way that a piece of oak furniture gains over years and years of polishing, and the way the leaves of my medlar shine.
Edmund de Waal
It faintly irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on to the scene to make it work for him. All this Margrathea nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Douglas Adams
To become a 'good reader' one must give oneself over to a regime of concentrated pleasure. One does not set out to read a book a day (there is no necessary pleasure in that) but may spend two or three years on one book [. . .], read only portions of another, devour a third at a single sitting.
Michael Schmidt
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
Neil Gaiman
So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war?
Christopher Hitchens
Love is very important, nurse Igor. Love is a gateway emotion. Without it, you cannot fully comprehend and experience things like... vengeance, for instance. Or terror. Loss. Hate. Hate is all you need. Hate means never having to say you're sorry. You can't hate properly without ever having been in love. Because nothing will teach you hate as well as being in love. You can't understand a place without loving it. And it's the act of loving it that teaches you to hate it, as it chips away at your heart with its daily failures and disappointments.
Warren Ellis
You raise an eyebrow at me speculatively.“Really?” you enquire your voice full of sarcasm.“Respect me how Jenna? By choosing not to spend anytime with me? By not even bothering to let me knowwhere you are? By rolling in when you feel like it? Wellthen… I think we need to redefine what we mean byrespect Jenna, don’t you?
Felicity Brandon
Well, you can't break an Unbreakable Vow....""I'd worked that much out for myself, funnily enough. What happens if you break it, then?""You die," said Ron simply. "Fred and George tried to get me to make one when I was about five. I nearly did too, I was holding hands with Fred and everything when Dad found us. He went mental," said Ron, with a reminiscent gleam in his eyes. "Only time I've ever seen Dad as angry as Mum. Fred reckons his left buttock has never been the same since."“Yeah, well, passing over Fred’s left buttock —”"I beg your pardon?" said Fred's voice as the twins entered the kitchen.
J.K. Rowling
If women were as good as men they'd be a lot better!
Terry Pratchett
We will all be destroyed whether we like it or not. I say let's like it.
DBC Pierre
Is not the gospel its own sign and wonder? Is not this a miracle of miracles, that 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish'? Surely that precious word, 'Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely' and that solemn promise, 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,' are better than signs and wonders! A truthful Saviour ought to be believed. He is truth itself. Why will you ask proof of the veracity of One who cannot lie?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The cost of life is simply the value that was extracted from the time available.
Steven Redhead
There have been many authorities who have asserted that the basis of science lies in counting or measuring, i.e. in the use of mathematics. Neither counting nor measuring can however be the most fundamental processes in our study of the material universe—before you can do either to any purpose you must first select what you propose to count or measure, which presupposes a classification.
Roy A. Crowson
My love is of a birth as rareAs 'tis, for object, strange and high;It was begotten by DespairUpon Impossibility.
Andrew Marvell
Sadness is never bad," said Amparo. "Sadness is the mirror of being happy
Tim Willocks
Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.
Neil Gaiman