Quotes by British Authors - Page 247

He didn't say anything and I thought I'd shocked him, because I tend to do that. Not just with Michael but with pretty much anyone who can't deal with being honest and admitting that you have wants and needs and desires and all those other fun things.
Sarra Manning
I'm not interested in the reviews by critics over the age of 15.
Mark A. Cooper
I love to see the bud bursting into maturity; I love to mark the deepening tints with which the beams of heaven paint the expanded flower; nay, with a melancholy sort of pleasure, I love to watch that progress towards decay, so endearingly bespeaking a fellowship in man's transient glory
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Before we begin to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.
W Somerset Maugham
Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.
Stevie Smith
He has gone to the demnition bow-wows.
Charles Dickens
For the mind of man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one... And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other.
Michael Moorcock
It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.
Terry Pratchett
I remember only images, snapshots burned into me, bleeding into each other until I no longer knew the order in which they had happen.
Laure Eve
We were there too, the other geeks and weird kids whose lives were hellish at school, who escaped into books and computers, who stayed up all night scanning obscure forums, looking for transcendence, dreaming of elsewhere. We were there too, but you didn’t see us, because we were girls. And the costs of being the geek were the same for us, right down to the sexual frustration, the yearning, the being laughed at, the loneliness. […] We had to fight the same battles you did, only harder, because we were women and we also had to fight sexism, some of it from you, and when we went looking for other weird kids to join our gang, we were told we weren’t ‘real geeks’ because we were girls.
Laurie Penny
Tickles are what power my giggle machine.
Anthony T.Hincks
. . . the abandonment of metaphysics involves more than the redefinition of the nature of rational inquiry in accordance with the tenets of modern scientific methodology this redefinition itself makes matters of value and validity mere matters of opinion.
Alan White
Slow down. The Taliban were religious, in the sense that in their opinion a being called Allah really designed and created the world and everything in it, including them. They were also a cultus in that they believed that you should pray five times a day, study the Koran, fast during Ramadan, give a tenth of your income to the poor and visit Mecca at least once in your lifetime. It is a matter of record that they had the ancient statues at Bamyan destroyed. But Professor, who put up the statues? Buddhist monks, that's who. Possibly the monks were not religious, in the sense that they didn't believe in a designer-God but they were certainly part of a cultus and they had lots and lots of supernatural beliefs which you would think were Bad Things. So what you should have said is "Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues. Imagine no ancient statues for the Taliban to blow up." This is absolutely emblematic of your confused attitude. When a religious organisation does something which annoys you, you take it for granted that it was Caused By Religion. But when a religious organisation does something which you quite like you don't think that "religion" had anything to do with it. You hardly spot that there was any religion involved at all.
Andrew Rilstone
Our hearts will be broken a thousand times over, but who is to say that our hearts were ever perfect to begin with? Maybe they can withstand a few cracks. After all, the way that we love is not perfect. We love things to such an incomprehensible depth that these things become worn in. Wouldn’t the most beautiful thing in the world be a heart that has been through all of the wear and tear, as worn in as your favorite sweater that both keeps you warm and grants you a smile in return? That’s the kind of heart that I want. Bruises make for beautiful colors after all.
Elizabeth Brooks
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
Arthur Conan Doyle
A man needs to feel a little fear, Tolui, if only to have the pride of conquering it.
Conn Iggulden
He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.... We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different world, and then we'll build... The Republic of Heaven.
Philip Pullman
It was the wildness of it that got me going: the primal lust, the sheer needs of two people in heat, quickly finding ways to express their sacred hunger to each other in animal passion.
Fiona Thrust
The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.
Augustine Birrell
Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words.
Terry Pratchett
Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints.
Henry James
Time and Nemesis will do that which I would not, were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy - do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine - so will you.
George Gordon Byron
Ah tell me not that memory Sheds gladness o'er the past What is recalled by faded flowers Save that they did not last?
Letitia Landon
If you surround yourself with people who don't care about you, be prepared for a life of misery.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
I have heard it said that a happy childhood is a curse, because what follows can never measure up. All I can say is, those people must want too much; they can't accept that life is a series of struggles and that happiness can be found in overcoming them, drawing strength from the reserves laid down in the good years.
Deborah Lawrenson
Take the straight path, even if it is long: marry no widow, even if she is a houri.
Idries Shah
Those who are so eager for women and girls to go back to the kitchen might think again about just what it is we might be up to in there. You can plan a lot of damage from a kitchen. It’s also where the knives are kept.
Laurie Penny
If you think you're unable to be on the cover of Time magazine, make your business to be there.
Paul Arden
He was so much the humblest one that Wendy was especially gentle with him.
J.M. Barrie
If you have positive energy you will always attract positive outcomes.
Steve Backley
That was when I realised a sad but incontrovertible truth: I was a geek, and there was no getting around it. I could dress in Kate’s clothes, but it didn’t make me Kate.
Sharon Sant
There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within--not without. It is each man's own affair.
H.G.Wells
The measures themselves are easily distorted to suit reporting purposes.
John Seddon
The doors of Hell are never bolted or barred, to those who belong there.
Simon R. Green
I thought I would like a job where inquiring about everyone else's private business was considered perfectly routine.
Joanna Cannon
From the very core of each of them, their ancestors seemed to cry out in inarticulate voices. right then, they screamed in alarm from times before symbols and language could depict such things that hunted and meant murder.
Adam Nevill
What a blessing to be able to leave the cares of life for a brief period and spend time in the outstretched arms of your Shepherd, rubbing, as it were, your cheek against His face in intimate fellowship through prayer.
Elizabeth George
Biography is higher gossip.
Robert Winder
There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways.
Richard Dawkins
I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.
S.J. Watson
My eyes open after my mind. All eyes always do.
Craig Stone
Memoirs: the backstairs of history.
George Meredith
But 'why then publish?' There are no rewardsOf fame or profit when the world grows weary.I ask in turn why do you play at cards?Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary.It occupies me to turn back regardsOn what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery,And what I write I cast upon the streamTo swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.
George Gordon Byron
If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.
F. David Peat
It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.
Charlotte Brontë
Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.
Oliver Sacks
Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.
Bill Bryson
Yet, I believe that my experience of depression has helped me to be a more humane and understanding therapist. Psychiatrists get depressed too, more often than other doctors. Being an expert in depression doesn't confer any immunity from it and I am aware that I don't have all the answers.
Linda Gask
Humph,' he said, with a disagreeable air, 'the universe does its work very quietly.' (“The Bogey Man”)
A.E. Coppard
Life is a repeated cycle of getting lost and then finding yourself again. There are many smaller cycles within that cycle where you get lost to a smaller degree and then remember yourself again. Sometimes you do it to yourself on purpose, consciously or unconsciously. Every time you get lost it is so that you can learn something or experience something from a different perspective.
Jay Woodman
Never underestimate a girl’s love for her favorite band. Never think even for a minute, that she won’t defend them to her death. Because it’s not just the music that makes that band her favorite. It’s the guys, the gals. It’s the fans. People whom of which she has interacted with thanks to the band. That band might of saved her life, or just made her smile everyday. That band has never broke her heart and has yet to leave her. No wonder she finds such joy in her music.
Alex Gaskarth
I'm a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more. We don't change. We hold on. I say great good will come of it. This is the true King of Narnia we've got here: a true King, coming back to true Narnia. And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King.
C.S. Lewis
For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can't possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have.
Dorothy L. Sayers
A piece of art only succeeds when it's creator...possesses the belief that brings it into being
Jessie Burton
The truth is I don’t know what happens to the spirits of the dead when they leave this world. Priests may claim to, even Truthseeker may claim to. However nobody truly knows. All Truthseeker truly knows is that Ishar, Kirfell, Orion and Avanti are lies. He has no proof of an alternative. I don’t know. There may be nothing beyond this dark reality we live in, but that doesn’t feel right to me. We love, we hate, we fight, we strive... People’s lives seem too complex and important to be simply extinguished like a candle.’~Vexis ZaelwarshDeathsworn Arc 5: The Temple of the Mad God
Martyn Stanley
I love that word. Forever. I love that forever doesn't exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time. It's beautiful and doomed.
Viv Albertine
[Religion is] a fantasy [and is] completely empty of any explanatory content. It is also evil.
Peter Atkins
Running is a brutal and emotional sport. It's also a simple, primal sport. As humans, on a most basic level, we get hungry, we sleep, we yearn for love, we run.
Adharanand Finn
Do go on,' he said. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy.
Tom Sharpe