Quotes by British Authors - Page 223

In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.
Idries Shah
..there are two possible endings to every story.
Christie Watson
You'll find that more doors open if you approach them with an open heart rather than a closed mind.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.
C.S. Lewis
The merits and services of Christianity have been industriously extolled by its hired advocates. Every Sunday its praises are sounded from myriads of pulpits. It enjoys the prestige of an ancient establishment and the comprehensive support of the State. It has the ear of rulers and the control of education. Every generation is suborned in its favor. Those who dissent from it are losers, those who oppose it are ostracised; while in the past, for century after century, it has replied to criticism with imprisonment, and to scepticism with the dungeon and the stake. By such means it has induced a general tendency to allow its pretensions without inquiry and its beneficence without proof.
Joseph Mazzini Wheeler
Keep trying. Take care of the small circle around you. When you have succeeded with them then move outwards one small step at a time.
Audrey Hepburn
You brothers-such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilized. He thought I was joking, I wasn't." - Malcador
Chris Wraight
People are idiots, Choo. Always remmber that: people are faithless, backstabbing, weak, creepy, stupid, lazy idiots.
Michael Grant
Words are made by history, we build them and they change meaning through time, but the music they play...
Claire North
Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.
J.G. Ballard
I was afraid I wrote neither well enough nor ill enough for success.
E.W. Hornung
I can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.
Michael Morpurgo
It you taste nice I may bite!
Amy Mah
This is a picture of him from 1919, just after the war, looking like he slept in that uniform all the way from France. He still had that face, but he wasn't the same. I know there's men who came back changed: the Paterson boy up in Brownville hung himself that summer. Nobody talked about it much, and I suppose that was for the best. But Jack wasn't like that; it hadn't been a terrible thing for him, I don't think. Or if it had been, then it was one of those terrible things you get through and it sets you free.
David F. Porteous
I always watch you. You consume my every thought.
M.A. Stacie
The days passed, the weeks. But everything seemed to have fused, gone into a conglomerated mass. He could not tell one day from another, hardly one place from another. Nothing was distinct or distinguishable. Often he lost himself for an hour at a time, could not remember what he had done.
D.H. Lawrence
Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.
C.S. Lewis
What! Would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or any person I may say? No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it.
Jane Austen
Here's to the kids who are different,The kids who don't always get A's,The kids who have ears twice the size of their peers,And noses that go on for days...Here's to the kids who are different,The kids they call crazy or dumb,The kids who don't fit, with the guts and the grit,Who dance to a different drum...Here's to the kids who are different,The kids with the mischievous streak,For when they have grown, as history's shown,It's their difference that makes them unique!
Digby Wolfe
Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.
Joanne Harris
The Mauna Kea night shift was an 18 hour night in wintertime at the 13,796 feet summit (before sunset to after sunrise) with insufficient time for adequate sleep before the next night shift. Night shift was between 5 and 8 nights long and we slept at 9,200 feet. We sat at a desk staring at four large computer monitors and a large cathode ray tube television. I would also use my Wi-Fi laptop computer. I would have extreme fatigue by the end of every night shift and have chapped lips which I now associate with exposure to the artificial light from the computer screens. A good day of sleep between shifts was rare and starting the next shift fatigued was normal.
Steven Magee
Teaching:One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.Saying of the Prophet
Idries Shah
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?
Christopher Hitchens
No. I remember. So long as I don't think about it too much, my hands and feet take over; some memory locked into muscle that my brain has nothing to do with.I know how to drive. And I'm better at it than he is.
Teri Terry
Love doesn't make the world go round Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
There is a common language, a mode of consciousness, almost a secret sign which can be read and recognized by all who are similarly engaged. Such realizations help fend off the feeling of isolation which can dog the steps of those who seek the Grail.
John Matthews
The man stood alone by the hive. On impulse he put his palm against the wood, as if feeling for a pulse.
Laline Paull
[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!
Terry Pratchett
It’s in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of everyman’s life, but it’s writ large, and we love it.
Tom Hiddleston
Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.
Idries Shah
I have rightfully no other business each day but to do God's work as a servant, constantly regarding His pleasure. May I have grace to live above every human motive, simply with God and to God.
Henry Martyn
I hate her." Merlin laughed, tossing the stick down. "Not so. You have forgotten how to love. That's a different sorrow.
Catherine Fisher
Yesterday's shortcuts are today's nightmares. The race is quicker when we're stricter. Keep your eyes on today, and declare what you may.
Mark Donnelly
If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive--then don't be a writer.
Graham Swift
Trees emit a wide variety of electromagentic radiation and it is regarded as healthy to live in a natural area that is surrounded by trees due to these beneficial emissions to human health.
Steven Magee
Never let your uniqueness be compromised
Benny Bellamacina
If a wicked rake doesn’t kiss a young lady when they’re alone in a moonlit rose garden, might it mean he doesn’t intend to? There were rules about such things. Weren’t they written down somewhere? If not, then they should be. A Treatise on Rakes, written for Susceptible Young Ladies, by a Lady of Distinction.
Anna Bradley
I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.
S.J. Watson
He will be a small man inside," said Mma Ramotswe. "He will feel small and unimportant. That is why he needs to put ladies down, Mma. Men who are big inside never feel the need to do that.
Alexander McCall Smith
What you fear most of all is —fear. Very wise...
J.K. Rowling
Then all the winds of Heaven ran to join hands and bend a shoulder, to bring down to me the sound of a noble hymn that was heavy with the perfume of Time That Has Gone.The glittering multitudes were singing most mightily, and my heart was in blood to hear a Voice that I knew.The Men of the Valley were marching again.My Fathers were singing up there.Loud, triumphant, the anthem rose, and I knew, in some deep place within, that in the royal music was a prayer to lift up my spirit, to be of good cheer, to keep the faith, that Death was only an end to the things that are made of clay, and to fight, without heed of wounds, all that brings death to the Spirit, with Glory to the Eternal Father, forever, Amen.
Richard Llewellyn
October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end the tale.Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.
Neil Gaiman
To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself.
Auberon Herbert
We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.
Pat Barker
And then I noticed the dandelions.
Melvin Burgess
I didn't care about goals or expectations any more, I was just determined to race my heart out.
David Millar
People who continue in blatant sin whilst exercising spiritual gifts create this ever widening gulf in their personality which results in spiritual failure, emotional collapse, sometimes mental breakdown, physical illness, relational difficulties and quite often a complete moral lapse.
Graham Cooke
I never trusted anybody at all. I don't know why it was so hard, I just didn't.
Marianne Faithfull
Lie to yourself, not to someone else
H.F. Stewart
The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
G.K. Chesterton
Let me introduce you. Sophie, this is Miss Eliot, from the National Childcare Agency. Miss Eliot, this is Sophie, from the ocean.
Katherine Rundell
The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.
Richard Dawkins
There is only one thing about which I am certain and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.
W Somerset Maugham
Study the nature around you, but also within you.
Fennel Hudson
If you are going to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
Winston S. Churchill
Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?''There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose:'what else is it good for?''But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.'It could bark,' said the Rose.
Lewis Carroll
Men are brittle, I reckon. They don't bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.
Joe Abercrombie
The psyche is the essence of humanity, its greatest instrument, an indefinable, multidimensional creative entity of enormous scope, subtlety, and power that eludes all attempts to explain it, including this one. The psyche becomes impossible to fully describe because there is nothing, including the process of describing it, that is not 'it' in action.
Paul Levy
The pair smiled desperately at one another. And for the first time ever, despite the fact that everyone he knew - even the gods themselves - would condemn him for it, Jebel didn't think of Tel Hesani as a slave, but as an equal.
Darren Shan
At a certain point talk about 'essence' and 'oneness' and the universal becomes more tautological than inquisitive.
Christopher Hitchens