Quotes by British Authors - Page 207

No one ever said aloud any of the kinds of things he was so constantly thinking, because no one in the parish, not Alice, not Lady Higgs, not anybody, ever seemed to see the things he saw. If they thought as he did, if they saw what he did, they never mentioned it; and to have things which are precious to one eternally unmentioned makes one, he had long discovered, lonely. These August nights, for instance--quite remarkably and unusually beautiful, warm and velvety as he had never known them, ushered in each evening by the most astonishing variety of splendid sunsets--nobody had said a single word about them. They might have been February ones, for all the notice they got. Sometimes he climbed up to the top of Burdon Down towards evening, and stood staring in amazement at what looked like heaven let loose in flames over England; but always he stood alone, always there was no one but himself up there, and no one afterwards, when he descended from his heights, seemed to be aware that anything unusual had been going on.
Elizabeth von Arnim
So the fox killed his brother, the wolf. (Mother Scaer)
Joe Abercrombie
In many ways my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that.
Lucy Foley
Leslie-Ann set down her own bucket and watched, marveling, as a quarter of an inch of water covered the bottom.When she looked away, she saw an older kid. She’d seen him around. But usually he was with Orc and she was too scared of Orc ever to get near him.She tugged on Howard’s wet sleeve. He seemed not to be sharing in the general glee. His face was severe and sad.“What?” he asked wearily.“I know something.”“Well, goody for you.”“It’s about Albert.”Howard sighed. “I heard. He’s dead. Orc’s gone and Albert’s dead and these idiots are partying like it’s Mardi Gras or something.”“I think he might not be dead,” Leslie-Ann said.Howard shook his head, angry at being distracted. He walked away. But then he stopped, turned, and walked back to her. “I know you,” he said. “You clean Albert’s house.”“Yes. I’m Leslie-Ann.”“What are you telling me about Albert?”“I saw his eyes open. And he looked at me.
Michael Grant
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
Winston S. Churchill
Mr. Charles Dickens was serializing his novel Oliver Twist; Mr. Draper had just taken the first photograph of the moon, freezing her pale face on cold paper; Mr. Morse had recently announced a way of transmitting messages down metal wires. Had you mentioned magic or Faerie to any of them, they would have smiled at you disdainfully, except, perhaps for Mr. Dickens, at the time a young man, and beardless. He would have looked at you wistfully.
Neil Gaiman
Here we will see that pharmaceutical companies spend tens of billions of pounds every year trying to change the treatment decisions of doctors: in fact, they spend twice as much on marketing and advertising as they do on the research and development of new drugs. Since we all want doctors to prescribe medicine based on evidence, and evidence is universal, there is only one possible reason for such huge spends: to distort evidence-based practice.
Ben Goldacre
This was how I would die. Strangled by an attractive, seminaked woman inside a fridge with a giant tarantula in the middle of a sea of carnivorous jam. As I blacked out, all I could think of was a fortune teller I'd spoken to a few years ago, and how full of shit she'd turned out to be.
Yahtzee Croshaw
One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire helps to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act.
Hannah More
We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.
Alexander Hamilton
It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.
A.S. Byatt
Ardour in well-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment; you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers. It isn't content till it perspires. And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, "I've had enough of this.
Arnold Bennett
What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.
J. Sidlow Baxter
I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.
Neil Gaiman
Often she felt as though she had been picked up and turned about like a kaleidoscope, that all her complacent assumptions had been shaken up and reassembled in a different order
Judith Lennox
What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting?
H.G.Wells
The best way of keeping a low profile was to immerse himself in the mundane. Act like them, talk like them. A smile, a joke was all it took - at least during the day. The night was his own.
Caroline Mitchell
We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind.""Oh, no! You think so?""Yes.""But... no... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time.""Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad."Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror."Gosh," he said.
Terry Pratchett
It [childbearing] was never intended to be as time-consuming and self-conscious a process as it is. One of the deepest evils in our society is tyrannical nurturance.
Germaine Greer
The proper stuff of fiction” does not exist everything is the proper stuff of fiction every feeling every thought every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her as well as honour and love her for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.
Virginia Woolf
Grow old with me! The best is yet to be The last of life for which the first was made: Our times are in his hands Who sayeth "a whole I plant Youth shows but half Trust God see all nor be afraid."
Robert Browning
A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!
J.K. Rowling
Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them.
Freddie Mercury
The true test of life isn't how you cope when everything is going in your favour; it's how you deal with things that could destroy you, if you let them.
Holly Bourne
As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive.
C.S. Lewis
One could always imagine that one's life, though smoldering in parts, might be undamaged in the west.
Chris Cleave
The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings which form the gateway to life.
N.T. Wright
Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.
Terry Pratchett
They said that Superman was faster than a speeding train. If that's the case, how fast were his sperm and would Lois survive?It makes you think, doesn't it?
Anthony T.Hincks
Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books.
Jasper Fforde
There is one thing we can do better than anyone else: we can be ourselves.
Arthur Ward
The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors -and if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.
Jane Austen
Chastity ... has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.
Virginia Woolf
Perhaps the breaking of the human spirit into submissive, thoughtless robots is the most terrible feature of Stalin’s Russia. Humanity is bowed down. Every one cringes before his superiors, and those who abase themselves seek outlets in bullying and terrifying the unfortunates beneath them. Integrity, courage and charity disappear in the stifling atmosphere of cant, falsehood and terror.
Freda Utley
The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire.
Idries Shah
The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony. Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband, and though she made frequent concessions it must be confessed that her concessions were not always graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she meant to do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile, nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by installments.
Henry James
What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.
Christopher Hitchens
Your heart knows there is a greater version of your life available to you.
Beth Kempton
All love is blind to reason, and maybe that's why some people are so strong.
Robert Holdstock
Jim looks out the car window with his nose pressed to the glass. Sometimes he pretends to be asleep. Not because he is tired, but because he needs to be quiet.
Rachel Joyce
The desideratum of the philosophy “better to have never been” is parents being charged with manslaughter for bringing children into the world
Dean Cavanagh
StagesFirst I thought that a Teacher must be right in all things. Then I imagined that my teacher was wrong in many things. Then I realised what was right and what was wrong.What was wrong was to remain in either of the first two stages. What was right was to convey this to everyone.(Ardabili)
Idries Shah
If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)
Karen Armstrong
Read the stories of the past to write your story for the future.
Habeeb Akande
The wand picks you, you don't pick the wand.
J.K. Rowling
Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here.
Alan Rickman
Only a fool goes to war in winter.
Jayne Castel
There were never going to be any happy ending for me. I know that now. But that is all right. That is all right.
S.J. Watson
The fact is that blaming doesn't get you anywhere. It keeps you stuck. Blaming stops you from moving on with your life.
Jane Green
For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes will not often be a bodily one like hunting or fighting. It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? - Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?" The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.
C.S. Lewis
Time is limited and some opportunities never repeat themselves.
Belle de Jour
It is obvious to you that the struggle will be an unequal one, but I shall make it - I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me, or any life left in me.
Emmeline Pankhurst
We shall bear in linea, however sadly, that psychopathology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the degenerate and perverse. The Congo, Vietnam, Biafra- these are games that anyone can play (...) What will follow is the psychopathology of sex, relationships so lunar and abstract that people will become mere extensions of the geometries of situations.
Ballard James G.
If you knew in advance that something momentous and terrible would happen you’d make an effort to imprint it all in your mind, wouldn’t you, every detail. But of course you don’t know. And perhaps that’s just as well.
Kathy Shuker
It was tempting to take refuge in feelings of British superiority, although I disliked myself for it and hoped it didn't show.
John Mole
I do not write to you, but of you,/because the paper that we write on/is our perishable skin.
Melissa Lee-Houghton
But when I read, I am completely alone. I have privacy from her and from everyone.
Sarah Crossan
When Christianity takes itself seriously, it must either renounce or master the world.
Roland H. Bainton
Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.
H. Havelock Ellis
Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
Zadie Smith