Quotes by British Authors - Page 202

Oh, the stoop of the Redeemer's amazing love! Let us, henceforth, contend how low we can go side by side with Him, but remember when we have gone to the lowest He descends lower still, so that we can truly feel that the very lowest place is too high for us, because He has gone lower still.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.
Charlotte Brontë
I think her favorite thing about our . . . collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything that came under discussion could be claimed or rejected by either side. Time and time again the power of an idea or a piece of art was assessed by either its beauty or its technique or its usefulness, and time and time again my wife was surprised by how rarely anything on earth satisfies all three camps.
Helen Oyeyemi
If the demons lived anywhere it was here.
Jeanette Winterson
[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.
Charlotte Brontë
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.We laughed, — knowing that better men would come,And greater wars: when each proud fighter bragsHe wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
Wilfred Owen
I shivered again, remembering. I put the tip of one finger to my tongue. It tasted sharp—like vinegar, like blood.Like money.
Sarah Waters
The gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low: And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow,And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Robert Browning
If you eat healthily most of the time you can afford to indulge yourself occasionally, but if you eat nothing but junk, you’ll end up not being able to run for a bus without huffing like a steam train. (The only drawback to being super-fit is that centring your life around your quinoa intake and yoga classes often results in an overdose of smugness which may cause your social circle to shrink.)
Rosie Blythe
Where would we be without it, memory? Well, it'll never die here. Never in this country. We feed it too well.
Josephine Hart
Book collecting is a full-time occupation, and one wouldn't get far if one took time off for frivolities like reading.
A.N.L. Munby
There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped' growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.
Graham Greene
The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.
Leonard Ravenhill
The quiet sense of something lost
Alfred Tennyson
I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.
Evelyn Waugh
You may wonder why so many of my quotes - and all my work - is about love, compassion and inner peace? Because life is nothing, empty, bereft without these things.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.
Monica Ali
By learning to observe without becoming involved, the pattern of stimulus-response which underlies most human behaviour can be broken. Little by little the realisation dawns that one is free to choose how to react in all situations … The grip of long-standing habits is weakened and replaced with a new sense of freedom.
Damien Keown
I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.
Tom Stoppard
We have no quarrel with the German nation,One would not quarrel with a flock of sheep.But, generation after generation,They throw up leaders who disturb our sleep.
Alan Herbert
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
Douglas Adams
Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold.
George Orwell
But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.
Stephen Fry
It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.
Matthew Arnold
Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There’ll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It’s a reversion to constant, visceral fear.
Ian McEwan
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
Samuel Johnson
With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own opinion continued the same, and she left disappointed and sorry. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her disposition.
Jane Austen
It was one thing to deal with monsters that were human in appearance. Another thing entirely to deal with humans who were monsters.
Samantha Young
Lover? I don't know. I don't know if she loves me. I don't know if I love her. All I can say is, she's the one I think about. All the time. She's the voice I want to hear. She's the face I hope to see.
Sophie Kinsella
It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.
John Stuart Mill
It’s got fuck all to do with being racist. I don’t care if he’s purple or orange or fucking yellow with pink spots! Although if he’s yellow with pink spots perhaps we should call a first aider. All I care about is his CSCS card and this Home Office card that is now in my possession
Karl Wiggins
After a long while he sat upright with great effort, exhaled a sigh and reached for a clean sheet of lined paper, smoothing it out on the desk. He unscrewed the lid of his fountain pen, laid it perpendicular to his paper, and began to write. Often he compared his writing to white water. He had only to leap in to be dragged away on its rapids, thrown this way and that with his own will rendered impotent. While writing he found the words came from the muscles in his hands, the feel of the shaft of his pen, the locked joint of his elbow. the scratching noise of the nib marking paper and, underneath all that, some coordinating impulse in his guts. Certainly not from his mind.
Ali Shaw
You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge yourself one.
James A. Froude
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
Julian Barnes
I was finished with assuming the best intentions of those who abandoned me, done trying to assuage my loneliness in barren places.
Saleem Haddad
The pursuit of the perfect then is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Matthew Arnold
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
Bertrand Russell
Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.
George Eliot
Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you're ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can. Then, perhaps, you will come back to it when you're older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child.
Neil Gaiman
People spoke in whispers, as if the war was listening
Chris Cleave
I just thought: Oh goodness, you can wear nice clothes and get your hair done and still be a feminist and a serious intellectual.
Jacqueline Rose
...for life is magic, magic is life, the left-over life we don't even notice we're living.
Kate Griffin
It's not a persons mistakes which define them - it's the way they make amends.
Freya North
You are all soldiers of Christ," he said, "and now is an opportunity given to you to show that you are worthy soldiers. When the troops of a worldly monarch go into battle they do so with head erect, with proud and resolute bearing, with flashing eye, and with high courage, determined to bear aloft his banner and to crown it with victory, even though it cost them their lives. Such is the mien that soldiers of Christ should bear in the mortal strife now raging round us. Let them show the same fearlessness of death, the same high courage, the same unlimited confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity for holding high the banner of Christ. There is work to be done for all, and as the work is done, men should see by the calm courage, the cheerfulness, and the patience of those that do it, that they know that they are doing His work, and that they are content to leave the issue, whatever it be, in His hands.
G.A. Henty
It is cheap generosity which promises the future in compensation for the present.
J. A. Spender
Why were there no words that spoke positively about being concerned about the self? Why was there only negative connotation in terms like "selfish", "self-interested", "self-centred", "self-obsessed" and so on? Why was it so much better to be without a self: "selfless", "self-sacrificing", "self-effacing", etc?
A.J. Dalton
Build a house?" exclaimed John."For the Wendy," said Curly."For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!""That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants.
J.M. Barrie
Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) has appeared in the general population at approximately the same time as Bee Colony Collapse.
Steven Magee
Why were kings cross? Maybe their trains were late! Some say warrior Queen Boudica was buried under platform 8.
Terry Deary
Detective-story writers give this thrill by exploiting the resources of the possible; however improbable the happenings in a detective story, they can and must be explained in terms that satisfy the reason. But in a ghost story, where natural laws are dispensed with, the whole point is that the happenings cannot be so explained. A ghost story that is capable of a rational explanation is as much an anomaly as a detective story that isn’t. The one is in revolt against a materialistic conception of the universe, whereas the other depends on it.
L.P. Hartley
Well, I wasn't going to abuse him. I was only going to ask: Is there any quality which distinguishes his work from that of twenty struggling writers one could name? Of course not. He's a clever, prolific man; so are they. But he began with money and friends; he came from Oxford into the thick of advertised people; his name was mentioned in print six times a week before he had written a dozen articles. This kind of thing will become the rule. Men won't succeed in literature that they may get into society, but will get into society that they may succeed in literature.
George Gissing
No one is an outside observer of nature,We're defined by our environment and our interaction with that environment -- by our ecology. And that ecology is necessarily relative, historical and empirical.
Beau Lotto
Success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth...distribution of energy...
Evelyn Waugh
Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless; nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom of heaven.
Charlotte Brontë
To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibilities of happiness.
John Lubbock
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
Salman Rushdie
You don't get the good shots sitting on your ass in the bad weather- Mark Johnson
Alan Place
The most important thing you must decide to do every day is put the Lord first.
Elizabeth George
Cookbooks, it should be stressed, do not belong in the kitchen at all. We keep them there for the sake of appearances; occasionally, we smear their pages together with vibrant green glazes or crimson compotes, in order to delude ourselves, and any passing browsers, that we are practicing cooks; but in all honesty, a cookbook is something you read in the living room, or in the bathroom, or in bed.
Anthony Lane
It is this brighter side, the romantic side, the emotional side, that appeals to me.
Fennel Hudson