Quotes by British Authors - Page 255

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
C.S. Lewis
I find people confusing.
Mark Haddon
I earned the right not to compete for a man.He wants me... Or... She is welcome to him...
Virginia Alison
Men were often far different in their roles as fathers than they were as suitors, the memories of which kept them, out of necessity, both vigilant and violent, and even in tender moments, to their daughters.
James Anderson
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?
Charles Lamb
There is a greater purpose to living which is found in the spirit, which is the Being, and that purpose is worth living for.
Belsebuub
Here’s the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.
David Mitchell
To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
Idries Shah
Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter…I seem to have spent a little less time painting than I might've done…But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger.
Syd Barrett
Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society
Bertrand Russell
Truly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed -- you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?
Jasper Fforde
Diversity is a very popular business topic today while the negative side of diversity, discrimination, remains a touchy and sensitive topic. Even in organisations which follow the letter of the law in terms of not discriminating against any individuals, it is common for people to show prejudice and bias...Have the courage to stand out from your colleagues by being very open to and comfortable with all kinds of diversity amongst your colleagues and stakeholders. When you sense someone is being ignored or marginalized spend time with them and bring them into discussions encouraging them to speak up as needed.
Nigel Cumberland
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
Winston S. Churchill
Smart people that like good health spend several hours outdoors daily in the shade of trees.
Steven Magee
If you wanna be a writer, you must learn to paint a picture with words.
Brian Jacques
I don't believe in guardian angels," Regine says seriously. "Just people who are there for you and people who aren't.
Patrick Ness
What is this life so full of care,We don't have time to stand and stare.
W.H. Davies
[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness [mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality, for actuality] In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.Error is the price we pay for progress.In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.[From various of Whitehead's books, not only PR]
Alfred North Whitehead
I refused to believe that love could take any other form than mine: I measured love by the extent of my jealousy, and by that standard of course she could not love me at all.
Graham Greene
You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue.
Neil Gaiman
I should like to ask you:-Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?"Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered:"Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by my many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me." "I understand the feeling!" exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush. "And you are the better for it?""I hope so.
Charles Dickens
Keep the body's energy frequencies high by always thinking positively.
Steven Redhead
...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.
P.G. Wodehouse
Draco, do it, or stand aside so one of us -" screeched the woman, but at that precise moment the door to the ramparts burst open once more and there stood Snape, his wand clutched in his hand as his black eyes swept the scene, from Dumbledore slumped against the wall, to the four Death Eaters, including the enraged werewolf, and Malfoy."We've got a problem, Snape," said the lumpy Amycus, whose eyes and wand were fixed alike upon Dumbledore, "the boy doesn't seem able -"But somebody else had spoken Snape's name, quite softly."Severus ..."The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape said nothing, but walked forwards and pushed Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face."Severus ... please ..."Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. "Avada Kedavra!
J.K. Rowling
Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious - all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me.
Tracy Chevalier
In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.
Dorothy L. Sayers
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
Idries Shah
In al-Qaeda we see a terrorist grouping with, in many ways, a medieval ideology, employing today's technology to great advantage. It works in a thoroughly modern way, virtual, amorphous, franchised and unbounded by geography. It has recruited people from all over the world. It understands the power of images, both in its campaign of terror and in its recruitment and proselytising material. It skillfully exploits the instant communications and social networking of the IT age.
Eliza Manningham-Buller
He says to me, Ranulph, he says... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past is made of the present, and that the present is always here.
Hope Mirrlees
You see a person's true Colors when you are no longer beneficial to their life. But there are also the other onces who burn like candles. They burn until theny give others Light!
Lily Amis
When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words:'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?''I am sorry... I fear not.''You see where you are now!
Charles S. Ricketts
All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
C.S. Lewis
He was a dim secondary social success -- and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their corks -- just as his gestures of response were the extravagant shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game of 'ombres chinoises' [French: "shadow play"].
Henry James
Then he asked my age and I asked his. That's the tradition in China. If we know each other's ages we can understand each other's past. We Chinese have been collective for so long, personal histories are not worth mentioning. Therefore as soon as Xiaolin and I knew how old the other was, we knew exactly what big shit had happened in our lives. The introduction of the One Child Policy shortly before out births, for instance and the fact that, in 1985, two pandas were sent to the USA as a national gift and we had to sing a tearful panda song at school. 1989 was the Tiananmen Square student demonstration. Anyway, Xiaolin was one year younger than me, so I assumed we were from the same generation.
Xiaolu Guo
His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows.
Charlotte Brontë
Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There's a conflict of dominant personalities. There's a group of ringleaders without a ring. There's the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is 'Don't do what you will, do what I say.' The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can't avoid it.
Terry Pratchett
Passion out of passion's obstacles.
Jeanette Winterson
It does not need to be perfect - or technically correct - to be magic
Rasheed Ogunlaru
it takes something more than guts to make a stand for what you know is right. It takes an inner, unbreakable belief of self that cannot be broken, shaken or snapped by anything or anyone. This is what zoomanity despises …
Alan Forrest Smith
Great," mumbles Kelly. "Bat stew cooked on a bat shit fire by an old bat.
Philip Webb
There will always be someone better looking; better off; smarter; richer; thinner; taller; shorter; have more friends than you; a better car and a better house.You might not have what they have, but when you look in the mirror, that's you!And that's something that they don't have and will never have!
Anthony T.Hincks
One should therefore not rely on mere words, but everywhere search for the intention behind them. (121)
Edward Conze
I've had enough of these streets that sweat a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people, of crying myself to sleep every night. I've had enough of thinking, enough of remembering.
Jean Rhys
Your commitment to follow God's plan makes a difference in the atmosphere in your home and improves the climate of your marriage.
Elizabeth George
Anticipation lifts the heart. Desire is created to be fulfilled - perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages. Isaiah uttered his prophetic words about the renewal of the natural Creation into a wilderness of spiritual barrenness and thirst. For him, and for many other Old Testament seers, the vacuum of dry indifference into which he spoke was not yet a place of fulfillment. Yet the promise of God through this human mouthpiece (and the word "promise" always holds a kind of certainty) was verdant with hope, a kind of greenness and glory. A softening of hard-heartedness, a lively expectation, would herald the coming of Messiah. And once again, in this season of Advent, the same promise for the same Anointed One is coming closer.
Luci Shaw
When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.
William Makepeace Thackeray
In my imagination you're waiting lying on your side with your hands between your thighs.
Arctic Monkeys
I believe in the power of love, and planting positive thought seeds into the collective consciousness.
Jay Woodman
We might 'conquer' nature if we could first, or at the same time, conquer our own nature, though we do not see that human nature and 'outside' nature are all of a piece.
Alan W. Watts
The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.
Alan W. Watts
Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.
Agatha Christie
And when we describe it as I shall do, it becomes plain that imagination is a specifically human gift. To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.
Jacob Bronowski
...read 1984 when it came out in 1949, and found its account of the ‘memory hole’ peculiarly evocative and frightening, for it accorded with my own doubts about my memory. I think that reading this led to an increase in my own journal keeping, and photographing, and an increased need to look at testimonies of the past
Oliver Sacks
Right time, right place, right people equals success.Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
Darkness gathered there, smothering out the sunlight. As the fleet headed towards it, it threatened to smother them too.
Dean F. Wilson
AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police.
David Bennun
In Martin Luther's life and behavior is very courteous and friendly, and there is nothing of the stern stoic or grumpy fellow about him. He can adjust to all occasions. In social gathering he is gay, witty, ever full of joy, always has a bright and happy face, no matter how seriously his adversaries threatening him. One can see that God's strength is within him. – Petrus Mosellanus
Andrew Pettegree
And what I learned is this: there are places in the world war one feels new, young, and alive again.
Suzanne Joinson
Most people, by the time they get old, have grown tough little shells around their hearts. Babies, like little Laila, start off with tender, loving, trusting hearts, but gradually, gradually, they learn to protect themselves and, as the years go by, grow tougher and tougher layers. Look at this! The outside layers of the artichoke are so tough they aren’t even worth eating but they become more and more tender as you come closer to the heart. These tough outer layers stop you feeling so much, so people walk around with hard little hearts that no one can touch. Of course there are some people who don’t have a choice – they just never learn to protect themselves...now that can be both a blessing and a burden.
Sita Brahmachari
We have to allow ourselves to feel it in order to heal it.
Sam Owen