Quotes by British Authors - Page 219

If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.
Julian Barnes
Wherever you look there is so much loss and folly to contemplate.
Rosie Thomas
God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.
Quentin Crisp
Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.
Richard Dawkins
It is sad that people need alcohol to make them happy.
Habeeb Akande
The Christian message has a moral challenge. If the message is true, the moral challenge has to be accepted. So God is not a fit object for man’s detached scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say “How interesting!” God is not interesting. He is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ … We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek … Christ’s promise is plain: "Seek and you will find.
John R.W. Stott
Soothing the exhaustionIn my soul,So I can fall back skyward,Safe in your arms,And survive to dream again.
Scott Hastie
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
Samuel Johnson
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
George Eliot
Seven Ages: first puking and mewlingThen very pissed-off with your schoolingThen fucks, and then fightsNext judging chaps' rightsThen sitting in slippers: then drooling.
Robert Conquest
We are not defined by what knocks us down - we are defined by how we get back up
Madeleine Black
Are the choices you are making going to really make you happy NOW or happy eventually?
Robert Holden
She has committed great sins, but they've been forgiven, and that's why she loves so deeply.
Philip Pullman
When these flies were put together in all-male groups they formed long, moving chains resembling conga lines, with each male attempting (unsuccessfully) to mate with the male in front of it.
Simon LeVay
Solitude is our greatest teacher
Mimi Novic
We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber's targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the 20th century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent. In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies do his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike?
Karen Armstrong
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Charles Dickens
Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth...
Neil Gaiman
These are just stories, you know. They are part of what we are, but they are not the real thing. All this year I’ve been thinking, What would White Raven do? And today, every time I thought it, I just didn’t care what White Raven would do. So today I’ve just done what I would do. I’ve just done what I think is right. I’m not going to stop making up stories. But I’m thinking now that they aren’t just for pretending to be someone else, someone more exciting, someone braver than you really are. They are not always jut a maze to get lost in so you can run away from life. They can just as well be maps to help you navigate.
Elizabeth Wein
Life do your worst; we are plump of knee and mild of eye, we are douce, glib and blithe; we inherit the semi, while others inherit the wind.
Hilary Mantel
Modesty is only arrogance by stealth.
Terry Pratchett
The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
E.M. Forster
I used to know Brian Howard well -- a dazzling young man to my innocent eyes. In later life he became very dangerous -- constantly attacking people with his fists in public places -- so I kept clear of him. He was consumptive but the immediate cause of his death was a broken heart.
Evelyn Waugh
This isn't goodbye. It's "see you later".
Louise Bagshawe
...Our stories are drive by who we are and what we do, and not by the events that happens to us.
Holly Smale
I have tried to write about politics in an allusive manner that draws upon other interests and to approach literature and criticism without ignoring the political dimension. Even if I have failed in this synthesis, I have found the attempt worth making.
Christopher Hitchens
The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.
W Somerset Maugham
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Lytton Strachey
My dad’s contentment is all that matters to me. When he’s laughing, I’m laughing. When he’s happy, I’m happy. I would give up my soul for him. To me, nothing else but his happiness matters.
Rebecah McManus
They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces.
Henry James
Farang, I'll bet you Wall Street against a Thai mango he'll be back, if for no other reason than to play the card of virile youth against Hudson's superior rank and thus restore his ego after that humiliating reprimand.
John Burdett
I studied history at university. My mutinous discontent recalls something I read there on the subject of revolutions. They do not happen, it was argued, when the oppressed class is being maximally ground down by misery, but, rather, when conditions improve. It is the slight relief of pressure which gives the downtrodden the chance to lift their heads out of the slime, to look about them. and become cognisant of the true circumstances of their lives.
Anna Lyndsey
You know, all poetry may be a cry of generalised love, for this, or that, or the universe - which must be loved in its particularity, not its generality, but for its universal life in every minute particular. I have always supposed it to be a cry of ;unsatisfied love; - and so it may be indeed - for satisfaction may surfeit it and so it may die. I know many poets who write only when in an exalted state of mind which they compare to ;being in love;,when they do not simply state, that they are in love, that they seek love - for this fresh damsel - or that lively young woman - in order to find a fresh metaphor, or a new bright vision of things in themselves. And to tell you the truth, I have always believed I could diagnose this state of ;being in love; which they regard as ;most particular;, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, ;item;, one graceful attitude of body or mind, ;item;, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say 1821-1844 – I have always believed this ;in love; to be of something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet who assumes and informs both.
A.S. Byatt
As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.
J.R.R. Tolkien
I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.
Tanith Lee
I am: a critical voice in the pushback against political correctness, and a free-speech fundamentalist defending the public’s right to express themselves however they please. Young conservatives and libertarians respond to me because I say the things they wish they could.
Milo Yiannopoulos
Read a different Africa. Love a vibrant Africa.
Kiru Taye
Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.
Mary Balogh
Some sessions are stars and some sessions are stones, but in the end they are all rocks and we build upon them.
Chrissie Wellington
LAW 46Never Appear Too PerfectAppearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.
Robert Greene
It is most unlikely. But--here comes the big "but"--not impossible.
Roald Dahl
When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?
T.H. White
And now the bad Mommy was here – outside his window. With a little whimper, he ran back to the bed, jumped in, and pulled the covers over his head.Good Mommy was gone now…and bad Mommy had come to eat him up.
Alan Kinross
The advantage of travel is that after a while you begin to realize that wherever you go, most people aren't really all that much different.
Joanne Harris
This I would like to be- braver and bolder, Just a bit wiser because I am older, Just a bit kinder to those I may meet, Just a bit manlier taking defeat; This for the New Year my wish and my plea- Lord, make a regular man out of me. This I would like to be- just a bit finer, More of a smiler and less of a whiner, Just a bit quicker to stretch out my hand Helping another who's struggling to stand, This is my prayer for the New Year to be, Lord, make a regular man out of me. This I would like to be- just a bit fairer, Just a bit better, and just a bit squarer, Not quite so ready to censure and blame, Quicker to help every man in the game, Not quite so eager men's failings to see, Lord, make a regular man out of me. This I would like to be- just a bit truer, Less of the wisher and more of the doer, Broader and bigger, more willing to give, Living and helping my neighbor to live! This for the New Year my prayer and my plea- Lord, make a regular man out of me.
Edgar A. Guest
The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
T.S Eliot
If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.
Terry Pratchett
I know someone who has never been able to read _The Cuckoo Clock_ since leaving her girlhood home, because it had to be read sitting halfway up the stairs, where the light through a stained-glass landing window fell on it, staining the pages red and blue and green.
Rosemary Sutcliff
The imagination is a healthy thing, and a great many scientific discoveries could not have been made without it, but it need to be harnessed to some serious object if it is to come to anything.
Diane Setterfield
And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurt us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent.
Arnold Bennett
It is so easy to thank people," said Mma Ramotswe, passing the letter over to Mma Makutsi, "and most people don't bother to do it. They don't thank the person who does something for them. They just take it for granted.
Alexander McCall Smith
It is undoubtedly true that religion is often socially conservative. By binding a people together under a shared God, a common cosmology and a common morality, religion creates order and stability and its rituals create social cohesio...n. By promising to the pious poor rewards in the next life, it reconciles them to their fate in this one and thus discourages them from rebelling against their condition...[also] religion [is] an inspiration to radicalism and rebellion. religion is a potential threat to any political or social order because it claims an authority higher than any available in this world. pp. 10-11
Steve Bruce
Smart radiation researchers use radiation resistance health techniques in order to offset the known biological harm of their toxic radiation exposures.
Steven Magee
All that technical expertise isn't worth a damn if you don't get the best out of people, though. . . . These were leaders who saw strength in ordinary people and showed them how to break tyranny.
Noël Coward
The great poet Hafiz says that you should dye your prayer-carpet with wine if your teacher tells you to do so.
Idries Shah
When you start out writing, your inner creative is just a little seedling with tiny leaves above the earth, peeping out into the air for the first time.
Joanna Penn
I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.
Friedrich A. Hayek
Heart language is logic set on fire.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
& everywhere he observed that casual brutality lighter races show the darker.
David Mitchell