Quotes by British Authors - Page 251

But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners.
Eric Hobsbawm
Depth of understanding involves something which is more than merely a matter of deconstructive alertness it involves a measure of interpretative charity and at least the beginnings of a wide responsiveness.
Stefan Collini
To live without zest is to live without an appetite for new experiences, to miss out on the spice, the juice, the edge that makes life thrilling. It is to live with deadened, flattened senses, with your passions unaroused and your curiosity untapped.
Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin
I could feel his whole body trying to claim me, want me, own me in lust, and it made me feel so valuable and wanted. As I was bent over the table, I felt like I was the world to him, and he could think of nothing else, could feel nothing else: he was consumed with my body, dedicated to exploring my female sexual power and energy, and his desperate hitting of me with the belt felt like he would rather die, than be without the chance to connect with me in sex.
Fiona Thrust
Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
William Golding
Boundaries keep people out mine served only to keep me in.
Anita Brookner
The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction.
Teresa Morgan
Old age is the Outpatient's Dept of purgatory.
Lord Cecil
In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know.
G.K. Chesterton
I believed in a return to Nature once. But how can we return to Nature when we have never been with her? Today, I believe that we must discover Nature. After many conquests we shall attain simplicity. It is our heritage.
E.M. Forster
Step aboard and we will fly through the window, through the sky
Brian Wildsmith
There was a certain usefulness in having a husband whom most people could barely tolerate: it deflected envy, for one thing.
Amanda Craig
Im.’ The monosyllable was heavy with contempt. ‘’E’s a twat.’‘Is he?’‘Yeah, ’e is. Ask Kieran.’She gave the impression that she and Kieran stood together, sane, dispassionate observers of the idiots populating Lula’s world.
Robert Galbraith
Many might go to heaven with half the labor they go to hell.
Ben Jonson
But the happiest people are the ones who understand that good things occur when one allows them to.
Danny Wallace
At breakfast!' said Louise in an awed voice. 'A man who can read poetry at breakfast would be capable of anything.
Mary Stewart
The trouble was, love was such a strong emotion. It made everything else unimportant. It grabbed you and imprisoned you in the moment."Deathsworn Arc 4: The Temple of the Mad God
Martyn Stanley
To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
Audrey Hepburn
You judge very properly, and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?
Jane Austen
Soeur Marie Emelie"Soeur Marie Emelieis little and very old:her eyes are onyx,and her cheeks vermilion,her apron wide and kindand cobalt blue.She comfortsgenerations and generationsof children,who are "new"at the convent school.When they are eight,they are already up to her shoulder,they grow up and go into the world,she remains,forever,always incredibly old,but incredibly never older...She has an affinity with the hens,When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries,she is the only grown-up, whose tears are not frightening tears.Children can weep without shame, at her side...Soeur Marie Emelie...her apron as wide and kindas skies on a summer dayand as clean and blue.
Caryll Houselander
Now here you see it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else you must run at least twice as fast as that!
Lewis Carroll
People who concentrate on giving good service always get more personal satisfaction as well as better business. How can we get better service? One way is by trying to see ourselves as others do.
Patricia Fripp
A Star is always a star no matter what stage they are on or at
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Enjoy your happiness while you have it and while you have it do not too closely scrutinize its foundation.
Joseph Farrell
But men are funny about their wars, they act as if they own them, and perhaps they do, for I don't think women ever start them.
Pippa Goldschmidt
It’s okay to get lost every once in a while, sometimes getting lost is how we find ourselves.
Robert Tew
Face your true self. You're reaction when facing any animal is much more likely to be Ahh, cute than Yum, dinner!
Mango Wodzak
Used a replica gun to steal a replica sportscar and experienced a replica of remorse
Steve Aylett
Hope springs forever.
J.K. Rowling
I do not think the Bible is weak, Mr. Morgan; and that is not the reason why I do not wish to read anything that is written against it. But I know that I am weak and ignorant, and that I might not be able to answer in my own mind, and to my satisfaction, all that clever men may choose to say or to write. And so my mind might get unsettled, and i have no wish to have it unsettled.
George E. Sargent
It is said that most people judge themselves too harshly. I disagree. If they judged themselves harshly enough, they would come to the conclusion that they’re the last person on Earth to be judging anyone.
Silvia Hartmann
I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.
Virginia Woolf
You are, madame, so perfectly armoured, so completely sure of yourself.''Now I wonder, if I am to take that as a compliment?''It is, perhaps, a warning--not to treat life with arrogance.
Agatha Christie
And now, finished with that puzzling mixture of insane intimacy and isolation which is notoriety, Velvet was able to get on quietly to her next adventures.
Enid Bagnold
A man can't soar too high, when he flies with his own wings.
William Blake
The focus of the entrepreneur must always be on exchanging products or services for money, and anything that distracts from that like actually running a business, should be avoided where possible.
John Winterson Richards
My spirit is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven
Charlotte Brontë
Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters.
Samuel Butler
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
Christopher Marlowe
Something now leaves me; something goes from me to meet that figure who is coming, and assures me that I know him before I see who it is. How curiously one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend. How useful an office one's friends perform when they recall us. Yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have one's self adulterated, mixed up, become part of another. As he approaches I become not myself but Neville mixed with somebody - with whom? - with Bernard? Yes, it is Bernard, and it is to Bernard that I shall put the question, Who am I?
Virginia Woolf
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.
Walter Savage Landor
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
Jo Brand
The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.
Malcolm Gladwell
Do you mind telling me what you pray?""I pray for the wisdom to find meaning in the . . . her death."And have you?""No, Mrs. Aislabie, I find no meaning. But perhaps that's because I'm too small to see a plan so large I rarely get anything but a brief glimpse of it.
Katharine McMahon
The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.
Julian Barnes
The best writers tend to look the roughest in photos. At least that's the excuse I use for why I look so bad in mine.
R.D. Ronald
This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.
Stephen Batchelor
Death is an inevitability, isn't it? You become more aware of that when you get to my age. I don't worry about it. I'm ready for it. When I go, I want to go doing what I do best. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't complain. It's been good.
Lemmy Kilmister
If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.They're right. It does.However much you beg it to stop.It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life...All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.And then the world turns...And somebody falls off...And oh God it's such a long way down.Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller...Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.Trying to measure how far we have to fall.No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives...Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold."Time's a great healer.""At least it was quick.""The world keeps turning."Oh Alec—Alec's dead.
Alan Moore
Love is like chickenpox. It's much worse when it comes late.
Neel Burton
I am boring, but I'm ok with it. I'm the anchor, the shoulder...I'm an average man...with a truly extraordinary wife
Jasper Fforde
Dear as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'dOn lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Alfred Tennyson
Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books – that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.
Jeanette Winterson
If I am asked, What do you propose to substitute for universal suffrage? Practically, What have you to recommend? I answer at once, Nothing. The whole current of thought and feeling, the whole stream of human affairs, is setting with irresistible force in that direction. The old ways of living, many of which were just as bad in their time as any of our devices can be in ours, are breaking down all over Europe, and are floating this way and that like haycocks in a flood. Nor do I see why any wise man should expend much thought or trouble on trying to save their wrecks. The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.
James Fitzjames Stephen
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.
Isaac Newton
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.
Elvis Costello
Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
W.H. Auden
The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.
Idries Shah
It was well said—by Jean Tarrou in The Plague, I think—that attendance at lectures in an unknown language will help to hone one's awareness of the exceedingly slow passage of time. I once had the experience of being 'waterboarded' and can now dimly appreciate how much every second counts in the experience of the torture victim, forced to go on enduring what is unendurable.
Christopher Hitchens
For other people, I can't speak - but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier - and that's a fact.
Christopher Isherwood