Quotes by British Authors - Page 231

I understood then, with absolute certainty, that theability of the horse to sense emotion, energy and spirit isbeyond what most of the human world realises. This is whytheir impact on us can be so instant, so consistentlypositive, so transformational.
Pam Billinge
_____________________" I'm lost for words.
Anthony T.Hincks
... on the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief-systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology.
Arthur Koestler
I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.
Piers Anthony
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
David Hare
It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet.
Alan Moore
I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right.
Henry Bessemer
There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
T.S Eliot
Originally it had had two settings: Stun and Kill. These had proved inadequate against the ridiculously well-armored skin of monsters from particularly rough planets, so I'd found a way to tinker with the built-in limitations. The dial now had a third setting, labeled with the handwritten words 'Solve All Immediate Problems.
Yahtzee Croshaw
I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.
Michael Faraday
The apprehension of this blessed truth (God's faithfulness) will check our murmurings. The Lord knows what is best for each of us, and one effect or resting on this truth will be the silencing of our petulant complainings. God is greatly honored when, under trial and chastening, we have good thoughts of Him, vindicate His wisdom and justice, and recognize His love in His very rebukes.
Arthur W. Pink
The UN lacked the ability to act without the support of its more powerful members, notably the United States. The American government wanted to avoid a repetition of its unsuccessful intervention in Somalia, in which thirty American troops were killed. President Clinton issued a directive on UN military conditions. The operations would also have to be directly relevant to American interests. These conditions excluded American support for UN intervention to stop the genocide [in Rwanda].
Jonathan Glover
So sweet is this song that no one could resist it. For in it is all the passionate ache for the moonlight, and the great hunger of the sea, and the terror of desolate places,—all things that lure men to the unattainable.Omari tessala marax,tessala dodi phornepaxamri radara poliaxarmana piliuamri radara piliu son;mari narya barbitonmadara anaphax sarpedonandala hriliuTranslation:I am the harlot that shaketh Death.This shaking giveth the Peace of Satiate Lust.Immortality jetteth from my skull,And music from my vulva.Immortality jetteth from my vulva also,For my Whoredom is a sweet scent like a seven-stringed instrument,Played unto God the Invisible, the all-ruler,That goeth along giving the shrill scream of orgasm.Every man that hath seen me forgetteth me never, and I appear oftentimes in the coals of the fire, and upon the smooth white skin of woman, and in the constancy of the waterfall, and in the emptiness of deserts and marshes, and upon great cliffs that look seaward; and in many strange places, where men seek me not. And many thousand times he beholdeth me not. And at last I smite myself into him as a vision smiteth into a stone, and whom I call must follow.
Aleister Crowley
Despite their displays of bravado, young boys can be peculiarly susceptible to atmosphere("Between Four Yews")
Reggie Oliver
It’s like my whole life my left ring finger has been lacking something, and finally it feels complete.
Anna Bell
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
George Eliot
Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the idealist, and you’ll find that you’ve fallen into the company of a cheerful, breezy professional politician. Address yourself to means, and you’ll be told to think of ends: to ends, and you’ll be told to think of means. Make an assumption, and you will find it overturned; offer yesterday’s conviction, and today you’ll find it shredded. What did Mirabeau complain of? He believes everything he says. Presumably there was some layer of Robespierre, some deep stratum, where all the contradictions were resolved.
Hilary Mantel
We may live without friends we may live without books But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
That was progress, right there. Except no one would ever know how hard I was working to keep my temper under control, because the whole point of keeping your temper under control is not doing things like throwing a milk carton in someone's face even though they clearly deserve it.
Cat Clarke
There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.
Stephen Fry
Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.
Idries Shah
One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man.
Idries Shah
...too often it's only children and old people who speak the truth. You just have to slow down and listen.
Eve Chase
Relationships don't remain constant, but are in a constant state of evolving, either positively or negatively.
Steven Redhead
Every advance in social progress removes us more and more from the guidance of instinct obliging us to depend upon reason for the assurance that our habits are really agreeable to the laws of health.
Emily Blackwell
This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.
E.M. Forster
Adversity has ever been considered as the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself being free from flatterers.
Samuel Johnson
Page after page, advert after advert. Lipsticks, undies, tinned food, patent medicines, slimming cures, face-creams. A sort of cross-section of the money world. A panorama of ignorance, greed, vulgarity, snobbishness, whoredom and disease.
George Orwell
With the warmth of an alien sun on his back, Jacob took a deep breath at the door and knocked.
Sharon Sant
Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way
Barry Unsworth
This faulty light fitting at the front door with the dangerously flickering bulb looks rather festive. Who says I don't do Christmas?
R.D. Ronald
Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it.
Henry Thomas Buckle
If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means—it may put me on my guard—at least, it may be something to live for.
Jane Austen
Iff replied that the Plentimaw Fishes were what he called 'hunger artists' — 'Because when they are hungry they swallow stories through every mouth, and in their innards miracles occur; a little bit of one story joins on to an idea from another, and hey presto, when they spew the stories out they are not the old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old — it is the new combinations that make them new.
Salman Rushdie
Anybody amuses me for once. A new acquaintance is like a new book. I prefer it even if bad to a classic.
Benjamin Disraeli
The reality is that in many countries torture of the most revolting cruelty happens routinely, often under the auspices of governments with good relations with Europe and the United States, sometimes using equipment knowingly supplied by Western companies. There is little reason to think torture is in retreat. The festival of cruelty is in full swing.
Jonathan Glover
He liked to feel the soft little hand clasping his own fingers, so big and coarse in comparison, and happily so strong. For in the child's weakness he felt an infinite pathos; a being so entirely helpless, so utterly dependent upon others' love, standing there amid a world of cruelties, smiling and trustful.
George Gissing
There are bald patches, like Daddy's head, on the pebble-dash, higher up than last year. I have picked off the stones. (I was a graffiti artist. No words, no pictures. The trace of identity marked in spaces.
Suzy Davies
Give her hell from us, Peeves.
J.K. Rowling
I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.
Laurence Olivier
I desire the world - therefore I have it.
Jay Woodman
Life is what it is...And even without having everything you desire...It is still gloriously beautiful...
Virginia Alison
..each ministry has an allocation of money to spend on projects agreed to by the government. Every Secretary of State is acutely aware that his tenure of office maybe very short, so he picks out a major contract for himself from the many available. It's the one way to ensure a pension for life if the government is changed overnight or the minister simply loses his job.
Jeffrey Archer
We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.
G.K. Chesterton
The kingdom of Aragon possessed an official known as the Justicia, for whom no exact equivalent is to be found in any country of western Europe. An Aragonese noble appointed by the Crown, the Justicia was appointed to see that the laws of the land were not infringed by royal or baronial officials, and that the subject was protected against any exercise of arbitrary power. The office of Justicia by no means worked perfectly, and by the late fifteenth century it was coming to be regarded as virtually hereditary in the family of Lanuza, which had close ties with the Crown; but none the less, the...
J.H. Elliott
Angels have very nasty tempers. Especially when they’re feeling righteous.
Clive Barker
Why be greedy when you can have it all.
Anthony T.Hincks
My brother-in-law had to give up his last job because of illness. His boss became sick of him.
Henny Youngman
A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom.
Tom Stoppard
It is winter, and very cold. There are icicles against the glass, and frost. I am tracing a pattern, before it melts. Before it fades, and is lost for good, like memories
Suzy Davies
The best thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost look as much like home as we can.
Christopher Fry
It’s free to feed your mind and your mind feeds your body
Benny Bellamacina
We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides.
Adam Nicolson
The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.
Christopher Hitchens
Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.
Alan Moore
We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.
Edward de Bono
The present moment isinseparable from life.I want the present moment to be my friend. I wantto be friends with anyoneI encounter now.I want to be friends with Life.This is a decision I am willing to make again and again.It's one I want to and willmake every chance I get.Ask: what's my relationship withLife?
Joshua David Swift
Her mother set to with the hairbrush again. “But would that be so awful, darling? To be the prettiest thing in Brimscombe-and-Thrupp?”“I should rather die.”“You nearly did.”“Yes, but I tend to blame the Germans.
Chris Cleave
Coraline tried drawing the mist. After ten minutes of drawing she still had a white sheet of paper with "MIST" written on it one corner in slightly wiggly letters. She grunted and passed it to her mother."Mm. Very modern, dear," said Coraline's mother.
Neil Gaiman
Lloyd George could not see a belt without hitting below it.
Margot Asquith