Quotes by British Authors - Page 216

I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do.  I need not sell my soul to buy bliss.
Charlotte Brontë
If Stuart is a freak... it is because he has had the superhuman strength not to be defeated by this isolation. It is because he has had the almost unbelievable social adroitness to be able to fit in smoothly with an educated, soft-skinned person like myself and not make me frightened half to death. If Stuart's a freak, I salute freaks.
Alexander Masters
I never knew cocaine to improve anything. When the white lines came out, it was time to call it a night: the music could only get worse. If I joined in, the next day's playback would provide clear evidence of the deterioration of both the performances and of my critical ability to judge them. I suspect that the surge in cocaine's popularity explains - at least in part - why so many great sixties artists made such bad records in the following decade.
Joe Boyd
He who let's the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation
John Stuart Mill
The world began in hazard and will end in it.
John Fowles
The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways. Some people have dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but must merely avoid becoming their victim. You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behavior when necessary
Robert Greene
There is only one hope for mankind - and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it - and that is the Labour Party.
Aneurin Bevan
All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey.
Hilaire Belloc
If we divide human attributes into "masculine" and "feminine" and strengthen only those attributes that "belong" to that sex, we cut off half of ourselves from ourselves as human beings, condemned forever to search for our other half. The world is in desperate need of multilayered human beings with the voices, stamina, and insight to break through our current calcified ways of doing things, (...) The patriarchal structures of honor, shame, violence, and might is right, do as much harm to Hamlet, Edgar, Lear, and Coriolanus as they do to Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macduff (...)(...) To have feelings, intuitive flights of understanding, a desire to have knowledge of what is happening below the surface, to serve. These are often called "feminine" attributes, and it is true that many women in the plays possess them. But they also belong to Kent, Ferdinand, Florizel, Camillo, as well as the women. So they are not "feminine" attributes: they are human attributes.
Tina Packer
Thirty years on, femininity is still compulsory for women—and has become an option for men—while genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity. Meanwhile, the price of the small advances we have made towards sexual equality has been the denial of femaleness as any kind of a distinguishing character.
Germaine Greer
A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.
Aldous Huxley
Unless social sciences can be as creative as natural science, our new tools are not likely to be of much use to us.
Edgar Douglas Adrian
When a woman walks into a room, her outfit is the first thing she says, before she even opens her mouth. Women are judged on what they wear in a way men would find incomprehensible.
Caitlin Moran
Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.
Hilary Mantel
The way towards simplicity is through outrage.
William Golding
Not being interested in other cultures is the normal state of mankind.
Bernard Lewis
Never say never
Charles Dickens
I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
G.K. Chesterton
...It was borne in upon her audience that the outside of Jane's charming head was distinctly superior to the inside.
Agatha Christie
Correctly identifying a negative emotion takes the brain out of fight-or-flight mode and into problem-solving mode, out of tension, anger and confusion and into ease, calm and clarity.
Sam Owen
It was not a noisy wind but the kind that suggests something very big and thin fresh from the horror of Infinite Space.
Jessie Douglas Kerruish
It was a black and white day of frost, which crawled along the dark trees and outlined twig and branch. The air was misty, and distant objects assumed a mysterious importance. Slight sounds, too, suggested infinite activities to the mind.("A Tribute Of Souls")
Robert S. Hichens
You are going, Jane?""I am going, sir.""You are leaving me?""Yes.""You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?"What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard was it to reiterate firmly, "I am going!""Jane!""Mr. Rochester.""Withdraw then, I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room, think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings; think of me."He turned away, he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my hope, my love, my life!" broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob.
Charlotte Brontë
He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.
Terry Pratchett
We’re on this planet for too short a time. And at the end of the day, what’s more important? Knowing that a few meaningless figures balanced—or knowing that you were the person you wanted to be?
Sophie Kinsella
Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet. A purely rational education will not suffice.
Karen Armstrong
It's no use talking about the 'Doomsday Clock' when it has already chimed. But, alas, the chimes fell on deaf ears.
Anthony T.Hincks
My body has certainly wandered a good deal but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.
Noël Coward
Dance like you're stamping on a human face forever, love like you've been in a serious car crash that minced the front of your brain, stab like no one can arrest you, and live like there's no such thing as God.
Warren Ellis
Did you slip in some cheese? Did it make you hate cheese, which you had previously loved? Why not sue a cheese-maker? Sue him for all the cheese he's got, drive him out of the cheese-making business!Did you burn your face with an iron? Why not sue Prometheus, the god that invented fire? Or an Iron Age chieftain, for having the temerity to popularise the metal.
Stewart Lee
It’s been so many years since I actually had a date that I’ve forgotten how to act. You don’t mention your ex when you’ve finished fucking your date it’s poor protocol
Scarlet Blackwell
Why don't you like getting close?' Marianne insisted. 'Is it because you might get hurt?' Owen shook his head. He still couldn't look at her. 'It's because it's never permanent. Everything dies. Everything gets destroyed. Even love. So we just make the best of it-get our pleasure where we can.
Andy Lane
We should pray when we are in a praying mood, for it would be sinful to neglect so fair an opportunity. We should pray when we are not in a proper mood, for it would be dangerous to remain in so unhealthy a condition.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Right now he was nothing but a physically hurt man who had been through hell and back, clinging to his promise. “We be... together. More than just... few... hours. Wanna die... with you. Not... alone.” Fought to stay awake, needed to spend every second with Vadim while he could.Vadim kissed that hand again, looked up. “We won’t die. We'll never die. I promise. He’d promise anything, meant it, would die defending this man, would live and die and suffer for him.
Aleksandr Voinov
No stars gleam as brightly as those which glisten in the polar sky. No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Tested faith brings experience. You would never have believed your own weakness had you not needed to pass through trials. And you would never have known God’s strength had His strength not been needed to carry you through.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Lovely as it would be to live off a trust fund and have nothing more taxing to think about than where your next hot stone massage was coming from, it's essential for all human beings to have a purpose. There's no honour in boasting “I don't work, dahling...” If you're not stretching yourself, discovering where your gifts lie, expressing your creativity, or enriching the lives of others, what are you for?
Rosie Blythe
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
Anthony Burgess
Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.
Isaac Watts
But some mistakes can never be righted and the guilt eats away at the soul. Of all the emotions we have, I have learnt that guilt is the most corrosive. Anger passes quickly, and hatred mellows with age and learning, but guilt endures.
Danny Scheinmann
Trees there were, old as trees can be, huge and grasping with hearts black as sin. Strange trees that some said walked in the night.
Neil Gaiman
He had had a severe shock some weeks earlier, when, having narrowly failed to capture a large grey-brown hare for his dinner, it had stopped at the edge of the forest, looked at him with disdain, and said, 'Well, I hope you're proud of yourself, that's all,' and had scampered off into the long grass
Neil Gaiman
Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
W.H. Auden
A hallowed frequency withinThat, even in your darkest hour,You can always turn to.
Scott Hastie
Nothing Is Strange
Mike Russell
Doesn't this place give you the creeps? You could perhaps do something with some floral wallpaper and a fire-bomb.
Terry Pratchett
What a blessing it is to love books.
Elizabeth von Arnim
I wasn't particularly worried; running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees.
Jasper Fforde
Ability is sexless.
Christabel Pankhurst
Have you noticed," said John, "how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'?
David Mitchell
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Neil Gaiman
So if you, O subsequent ones, ever deign to look down at us from your summit of effortless superiority, remember that you have only scaled it on the back of our efforts. For it is thankless to grope in the dark and tempting to rest until the light of understanding shines upon us. But if we are led into this temptation, your kingdom will never come.
Guy Deutscher
It’s better to make baby steps in the right direction than big steps in the wrong direction!
Lily Amis
A soap opera character on the bar TV says, "You killed him, you smothered him with doughnuts!" Another character, another scene--she is sitting in a room with a man and an elderly woman--the leas character wonders if she's dead. The man says, No, you're alive," and the other woman hands her a plate of doughnuts.A commercial comes on. A couple are on a date and the woman's voice-over articulates interior thoughts of what a wonderful guy her friend has set her up with: "He's so cute, and his IQ is higher than my bank balance . . . but she didn't tell me he has . . . Tourette's syndrome.
David Byrne
As I stepped onto the gloomy landing a word formed in my mind: two syllables, starts with a V and rhymes with dire. I froze in place. Nightingale said that everything was true, after a fashion, and that had to include vampires, didn’t it? I doubted they were anything like they were in books and on TV, and one thing was for certain — they absolutely weren’t going to sparkle in the sunlight.
Ben Aaronovitch
Old enough to remember the arrival of 'Have a nice day', Patrick could only look with alarm on the hyperinflation of 'Have a great one'. Where would this Weimar of bullying cheerfulness end? 'You have a profound and meaningful day now.
Edward St. Aubyn
He was not at the moment in very good odour at Bow Street. Such epithets as Blockhead and Blunderer had been used in connection with his last case. 'Jeremiah Stubbs, miss,’ said the Runner. ‘I am here in the execution of my dooty.
Georgette Heyer
Throughout her life, Highsmith looked for women whom she could worship. Sex was far from the most important factor in any relationship; rather, it was this near-divine quality for which she yearned.
Andrew Wilson
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K. Chesterton
Who talks most about freedom and equality? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?
Alexander Hamilton