Quotes by British Authors - Page 258

If I am right, Thy grace impartStill in the right to stay;If I am wrong, O, teach my heartTo find that better way!
Alexander Pope
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
Edward de Bono
Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.
Arthur Conan Doyle
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
W Somerset Maugham
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.
C.S. Lewis
The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
Benjamin Disraeli
Knowledge is what enables one to be wrong. (p. 11)
Mike Higton
Without a goal or an obstacle you're just running through a green cricket pitch for the rest of your life.
Chloe-Jasmine Whichello
For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to rememver the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
G.K. Chesterton
I pretended like all the oranges rolling everywhere were her happy memories and they were looking for a new person to stick to so they didn't get wasted.
Stephen Kelman
Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
Quentin Crisp
From beggar to thief is one step, but a step in two directions at the same time, for what a beggar loses in morality when he becomes a thief he regains in self-respect.
Angela Carter
I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare My business is to create.
William Blake
Mathematicians call it “the arithmetic of congruences.” You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Temporarily replace the 12 on a clock face with 0. The 12 hours of the clock now read 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to 11. If the time is eight o’clock, and you add 9 hours, what do you get? Well, you get five o’clock. So in this arithmetic, 8 + 9 = 5; or, as mathematicians say, 8 + 9 ≡ 5 (mod 12), pronounced “eight plus nine is congruent to five, modulo twelve.
John Derbyshire
Silence is not certain token That no secret grief is there Sorrow which is never spoken Is the heaviest load to bear.
Frances Ridley Havergal
You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.
Mary Renault
A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.
Thomas Hardy
History is disappointed with us human being.
Davan Yahya Khalil
Don’t hold back because you’re afraid of hurting someone else. If your best friend wants to be a cheerleader and you make the team but she doesn’t, don’t feel guilty. If you end up earning more than your sister, it’s not a betrayal. Your success might be an inspiration for someone else, while limiting yourself to avoid upsetting the balance doesn’t help anyone. Equally, rather than being paralysed by jealousy when someone else is coming out on top, use it to spur you on to greater things. Some of our best achievements will be triggered by envy at seeing someone else fulfilling our secret ambitions.
Rosie Blythe
There’s no such thing as writer’s block, so long as you’ve had plenty of time to think about what you want to write.
Fennel Hudson
It is understandable you would want to come back as yourself into a wonderland with the sharpness of colour of the Queen of Hearts in a newly opened pack of cards. But coming back as yourself is resurrection. It is uncommon.
J.M. Ledgard
...There is a duty of solidarity among all us impossible, near-invisible people: a duty, out of sheer cussedness, not to disappear completely, simply to ease the conscience of the rest.
Anna Lyndsey
Do you have a girlfriend?''No,' I said quickly.Deny Honour again. Peter only denied Jesus three times. I must have denied Honour like three thousand times.
Ruth Ahmed
The clever men at Oxford Know all there is to be knowed - But they none of them know as half as much As intelligent Mr. Toad.
Kenneth Grahame
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
I win.
Abigail Haas
Alex grabbed our things from the bike and bought them inside; then he fastened the tent closed, securing us in."Come here, babe, I'll keep you warm.
l.a weatherly
Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”~ Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice)
Jane Austen
Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate.
Alan Moore
The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already.
Mary Stewart
So as soon as I tell myself I'm the first man ever to be dropped into the world, and as soon as I take that first flying leap into the frosty grass of an early morning when even birds haven't the heart to whistle, I get to thinking, and that's what I like. I go my rounds in a dream, turning at lane or footpath corners without knowing I'm turning, leaping brooks without knowing they're there, and shouting good morning to the early cow-milker without seeing him. It's a treat being a long-distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or tell you what to do.
Alan Sillitoe
It is not good to wake a sleeping lion.
Philip Sidney
We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
And I would try and walk far enough away that people would not assume I was with him.
Neil Gaiman
A part of my depression lies, I think, in my unanswered question: Where is home? I feel a sense, always, of trying to find my way back to a place that doesn't exist.
Sally Brampton
Despite the growing clinical and research interest in dissociative symptoms and disorders, it is also true that the substantial prevalence rates for dissociative disorders are still disproportional to the number of studies addressing these conditions. For example, schizophrenia has a reported rate of 0.55% to 1% of the normal population (Goldner, Hus, Waraich, & Somers, more or less similar to the prevalence of DID. Yet a PubMed search generated 25,421 papers on research related to schizophrenia, whereas only 73 publications were found for DID-related research.
Paul H. Blaney
It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard
Jude Morgan
Unlike music, excessive reading has been shown to be dangerous for the female mind. It was taught in our earliest lectures: the male cells are essentially katabolic: active energetic; and female cells are anabolic: there to conserve energy and support life. While a little light reading is fine, breakdown follows when woman goes against her nature.
Anna Hope
As the light begins to intensify, so does my misery, and I wonder how it is possible to hurt so much when nothing is wrong.
Tabitha Suzuma
I sometimes think that I don't have a purpose in this world. I am simply useless and wandering.
Ginger and Rosa
To the extent that we believe we can skip steps, avoid the process, magically gain power through political connections or easy formulas, or depend on our natural talents, we move against this grain and reverse our natural powers. We become slaves to time – as it passes, we grow weaker, less capable, trapped in some dead end career. We become captive to the opinions and fears of others.” (9) “This intense connection and desires allows them to withstand the pain of the process – the self-doubts, the tedious hours of practice and study, the inevitable setbacks, the endless barbs from the envious. They develop a resiliency and confidence that others lack.
Robert Greene
Lots of things are mystries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.
Mark Haddon
Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
J.R.R. Tolkien
There's a bit of kitten in all of us.
Anthony T.Hincks
Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.
Naomi Wood
I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.
Terry Pratchett
Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. If Angulimala is capable of renouncing violence, then tell me, your Majesty: is your civilized society also capable of being truly civilized and renouncing violence?
Satish Kumar
Boredom comes simply from ignorance and lack of imagination.
Susan Ertz
Vengeance is a way of clinging to what we have lost. A wedge in the Last Door, and through the crack we can still glimpse the faces of the dead. We strain towards it with all our being, break every rule to have it, but when we clutch it, there is nothing there. Only grief.
Joe Abercrombie
He knew that she had been dreaming that night and he knew what her dreams were about. She had forgotten them. He forebode to look at her. It gave him a grim, horrible, and rather uncanny sensation to think that a vivid, lacerating life could go on when one sunk in unconsciousness, a life so real that it could cause tears to stream down the face and twist the mouth in woe, and yet when the sleeper woke left no recollection behind.
W Somerset Maugham
I walked up the stairs and hesitated at the open door.
Susan Hill
I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.
C.S. Lewis
I heard him sweeping with the broom, and then he suddenly stopped.I had obviously got his attention, and he was lo
Fiona Thrust
If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
Samuel Johnson
Literature works from mind to mind and is more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment in his imagination. Should the story say 'he ate bread', the dramatic producer or painter can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own. If a story says 'he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below', the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word.
J.R.R. Tolkien
By strengthening our compassion, we give fuel to our courage and determination.
Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy.
Roland Huntford
Discontent and disorder were signs of energy and hope not of despair.
C.V. Wedgwood
What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess- unless he is a coward.
Rafael Sabatini
If I stopped loving Him, I would cease to believe in His love. If I loved God, then I would believe in His love for me. It's not enough to need it. We have to love first, and I don't know how. But I need it, how I need it.
Graham Greene