Quotes by British Authors - Page 187

God abides in men""God abides in men,These are men who are simple,they are fields of corn...Such men have mindslike wide grey skies,they have the grandeurthat the fools call emptiness.God abides in men.Some men are not simple,they live in citiesamong the teeming buildings,wrestling with forcesas strong as the sun and the rain.Often they must forgo dream upon dream...Christ walks in the wildernessin such lives.God abides in men,because Christ has put onthe nature of man, like a garment, and worn it to his own shape.He has put on everyone's life...to the workman's clothes to the King's red robes,to the snowy loveliness of the wedding garment...Christ has put on Man's nature,and given him back his humanness...God abides in man.
Caryll Houselander
To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I believe at least in one of the chief tenets of the Christian faith--contentment with a lowly place. I am a doctor and I know that ambition--the desire to succeed--to have power--leads to most ills of the human soul. If the desire is realized it leads to arrogance, violence and final satiety; and if it is denied--ah! if it is denied--let all the asylums for the insane rise up and give their testimony! The are filled with human beings who were unable to face being mediocre, insignificant, ineffective and who therefore created for themselves ways of escape from reality so to be shut off from life itself forever.
Agatha Christie
The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it—just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.
Alain de Botton
Oh my boy, you are so huggable and snuggable, is that why they callyou Snugs Bear?”“I’ve simply always been Snugs,” Snugs said, with an unusual, mysterious air, for it was nearly time to go to bed.
Suzy Davies
Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw everyday and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. (...) The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing.
Thomas Hardy
I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one's bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by an act of faith. It was as solid as a wardrobe. You don't have to believe in wardrobes. They are there, with corners. (The Troll)
T.H. White
English I remember I remember The house where I was born The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!
Thomas Hood
Three years with Claudia had taught Ruso that when a woman said something did not matter and refused to tell you what it was, it usually mattered a great deal—to her, if not to you. Frequently her way of punishing you for not knowing what it was in the first place was to refuse to tell you until you gave up asking. This was her cue to accuse you of not caring about her, otherwise you would have known what she wanted you to know without having to be told. Finally, if you were lucky, she would explain the latest way in which you had failed her expectations. If you were not lucky, she would explain...
Ruth Downie
I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.
Charlotte Brontë
Gawd knows and 'E won't split on a pal.
Rudyard Kipling
She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play
Thomas Hardy
There are events in one's life which, no matter how remote, never fade from memory
Jim Corbett
Discretion is not the better part of biography.
Lytton Strachey
Life wants you to be complete unto yourself, generally enjoy and expand consciousness, open, explore, love.
Jay Woodman
It is so unkind--' 'Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth!
Agatha Christie
West couldn't simply leave the man like this, he didn't have it in him."Goodman Heath," he said as he approached, and the peasant looked up at him, surprised. He fumbled for his hat and made to rise, muttering apologies."No, please, don't get up." West sat down on the bench. He stared at his feet, unable to look the man in the eye. There was an awkward silence. "I have a friend who sits on the Commission for Land and Agriculture. There might be something he can do for you…" He trailed off, embarrassed, squinting up the corridor.The farmer gave a sad smile. "I'd be right grateful for anything you could do.""Yes, yes, of course, I'll do what I can." It would do no good whatsoever, and they both knew it. West grimaced and bit his lip. "You'd better take this," and he pressed his purse into the peasant's limp, calloused fingers. Heath looked at him, mouth slightly open. West gave a quick, awkward smile then got to his feet. He was very keen to be off."Sir!" called Goodman Heath after him, but West was already hurrying down the corridor, and he didn't look back.
Joe Abercrombie
But that was just it - hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.
Terry Pratchett
Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night—little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape wil be quite hidden in the end.
C.S. Lewis
If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art.
Neil Gaiman
You won't get love from a child if you don't give love.
P.D. James
What d'you suppose I care if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn't waste my time with a vulgar slut like you.
W Somerset Maugham
No. In my eyes, she was most beautiful because at a time when she had every right to be terrified, she managed to show comfort to another person who needed it.
Bella Forrest
We believe that religions are basically the same…they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
Steve Turner
Unless people are prepared to declare themselves your enemies you have to hunt around for them.
Auberon Waugh
Perhaps all women are part faerie, for what woman can deny her faerie blood when the portals to her own land are open; when the full moon sings its insistent song; when sorrow and passion and rage pulse through her body at moon times. This is why women are the chosen ones of Faerie, pat of the vibrant, fluid, emotional soul of the world…
Brian Froud
God first appeared on the scene of human history in the role of a matchmaker. What a profound and exciting revelation!Is it too much to suggest that Eve came to Adam on the arm of the Lord Himself in the same way that a bride today walks down the aisle of the church on her father’s arm? What human mind can fathom the depth of love and joy that filled the heart of the great Creator as He united the man and woman in this first marriage ceremony?Surely this account is one among countless indications that the Bible is not a work of merely human authorship. Moses is generally accepted as the author of the creation record. But apart from supernatural inspiration, he would never have dared to open human history with a scene of such amazing intimacy—first between God and man, and then between man and woman.
Derek Prince
Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.
Christopher Hitchens
No one who is good can ever be ugly.
Roald Dahl
[..] when we get down to the subatomic level, the solid world we live in also consists, again rather worryingly, of almost nothing and that wherever we do find something it turns out not to actually something, but only the probability that there may something there.
Douglas Adams
There’s a saying, isn’t there, that when you’ve had a near death experience, all you want to do is have sex?
Kirsty Greenwood
There's more to good or bad than what's written in the Rulebook.
Jasper Fforde
...In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and foreknowledge of pain.
George Orwell
We think of our species as swinging on the pinnacle of evolution, but this definitely isn’t the final design. If our bodies don’t evolve much further, our minds will. It’s the only way our species can save itself. An evolution of human consciousness is only a matter of time. And that’s when we will finally discover the good life, hand in hand. Meanwhile we just have to tough it out and make the most of things.
Rupert Dreyfus
It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.
Henry James
It was the first smile of my life. Of course, that is a ridiculous thing to say; I had been smiled at often, the big man had smiled at me not a minute since. And yet I say: it was the first smile, because it was the first that ever went straight into me like a needle too thin to be seen.
Carol Birch
Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.
J.K. Rowling
Oh, the pain of it, thought Lee, thinking about his children, oh! the exquisite pain of unrequited love. The only authentic wound, the sweet curse they inflict on you, the revenge of heterosexuality.
Angela Carter
It was this mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together that made life the endless, changing and yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were really only appreciable with one's legs, as it were, dangling down over into the grave.
Walter de la Mare
At the foundation of the Christian life, there is a kind of sacred individuality, a sort of holy aloneness that cries out to be left alone with God. This isn't all of the Christian life. It doesn't erase those parts of a Christian's experience that happen in the context of relationships, but this sacred solitude needs to be discovered, respected, and protected.It is that place where we most irrefutably hear God tell us that he loves us, and we come to know that, no matter what other people may say about us or do to us, God will not abandon us. That holy solitude is the place where we find God's Spirit changing our affections and redirecting our identities. It is, for Jesus-followers, holy ground.
Michael Spencer
There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Parvus denied that universal suffrage was an end to itself since the middle class would always find ways to manipulate the electoral system. Freedom could not be begged for: it had to be won.
Robert Service
Why should I shatter your wonderful fantasy with my boring reality? ~ Evie Snow
Carrie Hope Fletcher
The famous atheist Christopher Hitchens once declared that ‘You’re expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon, towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks.’ Presumably that was what he had in mind when conceiving his three children.
Quentin S. Crisp
All the wealth in the world is nothing, pointless - of no true value - if you yourself feel worthless.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.
Richard Dawkins
Men are the enemy in much the same way that some crazed boy in uniform was the enemy of another like him in most respects except the uniform. One possible tactic is to try to get the uniforms off.
Germaine Greer
The discovery of the telephone has made us acquainted with many strange phenomena. It has enabled us, amongst other things, to establish beyond a doubt the fact that electric currents actually traverse the earth's crust. The theory that the earth acts as a great reservoir for electricity may be placed in the physicist's waste-paper basket, with phlogiston, the materiality of light, and other old-time hypotheses.
William Henry Preece
Home is in my hair, my lips, my arms, my thighs, my feet and my hands. I am my own home. And when I wake up crying in the morning, thinking of how lonely I am, I pinch my skin, tug at my hair, remind myself that I am alive. Remind myself to step outside and greet the morning. Remind myself that it’s all about forward motion. It’s all about change. It’s all about that elusive state. Freedom.
Diriye Osman
In the last four days I have got the (results) given by Tantalum, Chromium, Manganese, Iron , Nickel, Cobalt and Copper ... The chief result is that ... the result for any metal (is) quite easy to guess from the results for the others. This shews that the insides of all the atoms are very much alike, and from these results it will be possible to find out something of what the insides are made up of.
Henry Moseley
Ask us no questions and we’ll tell you no lies.
J.K. Rowling
If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.
James Lovelock
In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying "YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night, Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in."And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they're being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them.
Neil Gaiman
The private and personal blessings we enjoy-the blessings of immunity safeguard liberty and integrity- deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.
Jeremy Taylor
Democracy is an illusion in which we all believe.
Anthony T.Hincks
I tried your best and it didn't work, so now I'm going to try my best and I'm sure that I'll succeed!
Anthony T.Hincks
We may see a Creature with forty-nine headsWho lives in the desolate snow,And whenever he catches a cold (which he dreads)He has forty-nine noses to blow.'We may see the venomous Pink-Spotted ScrunchWho can chew up a man with one bite.It likes to eat five of them roasted for lunchAnd eighteen for its supper at night.'We may see a Dragon, and nobody knowsThat we won't see a Unicorn there.We may see a terrible Monster with toesGrowing out of the tufts of his hair.'We may see the sweet little Biddy-Bright HenSo playful, so kind and well-bred;And such beautiful eggs! You just boil them and thenThey explode and they blow off your head.'A Gnu and a Gnocerous surely you'll seeAnd that gnormous and gnorrible GnatWhose sting when it stings you goes in at the kneeAnd comes out through the top of your hat.'We may even get lost and be frozen by frost.We may die in an earthquake or tremor.Or nastier still, we may even be tossedOn the horns of a furious Dilemma.'But who cares! Let us go from this horrible hill!Let us roll! Let us bowl! Let us plunge!Let's go rolling and bowling and spinning untilWe're away from old Spiker and Sponge!
Roald Dahl
It is necessary to distinguish between history and fantasy wherever possible. And then use them against each other.
Geoff Ryman