Quotes by British Authors - Page 271

[The Devil and his angels] have... persuad[ed]... humans that a curious, and usually short-lived, experience which they call "being in love" is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding. This idea [comes from their] parody of an idea that came from [God]... Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This... He calls Love, and this... can be detected under all He does and even all He is... He introduces into matter... the organism, in which the parts are [set at odds with] their natural destiny of competition and made to cooperate... In... humans [God] has... associated affection between the parties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it-thus producing the Family, which is like the organism, [but] the members are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way... [Heavenly Father] described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love"...
C.S. Lewis
If we could only turn back time
Kate Winslet
[Patricia Highsmith] was overwhelmed by sensory stimulation - there were too many people and too much noise and she just could not handle the supermarket. She continually jumped, afraid that someone might recognise or touch her. She could not make the simplest of decisions - which type of bread did she want, or what kind of salami? I tried to do the shopping as quickly as possible, but at the check-out she started to panic. She took out her wallet, knocked off her glasses, dropped the money on the floor, stuff was going all over the place.
Andrew Wilson
In my own shire, if I was sadHomely comforters I had:The earth, because my heart was sore,Sorrowed for the son she bore;And standing hills, long to remain,Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.And bound for the same bourn as I,On every road I wandered by,Trod beside me, close and dear,The beautiful and death-struck year:Whether in the woodland brownI heard the beechnut rustle down,And saw the purple crocus paleFlower about the autumn dale;Or littering far the fields of MayLady-smocks a-bleaching lay,And like a skylit water stoodThe bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads,The season range the country roads,But here in London streets I kenNo such helpmates, only men;And these are not in plight to bear,If they would, another's care.They have enough as 'tis: I seeIn many an eye that measures meThe mortal sickness of a mindToo unhappy to be kind.Undone with misery, all they canIs to hate their fellow man;And till they drop they needs must stillLook at you and wish you ill.
A.E. Housman
What living occasion can,Be just to the absent?
W.H. Auden
I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
C.S. Lewis
In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure.
J.R.R. Tolkien
A character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered
Thomas Hughes
[A] competent magician should have the ability to stand still at a bus stop with closed eyes and have the entire universe disappear apart from a single blazing visualised sigil or muttered spell.
Peter J. Carroll
There is no time for regrets. Regrets relate to the past. We have been there. We need to progress to the future.
Marilyn L Rice
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
If you're not aiming at perfection, you're not trying hard enough.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Oh, I simply can’t think. When I really want to depress myself, I think of all the brilliant men I know, married to their stupid wives. Enough to break your heart, it really is
Doris Lessing
Souls do not break neither do hearts. Ravaged by time, they continue living within us and it is our choice whether to remove the walls of self preservation that we build as protection or to hide behind them and remain hardened within our comfort zone.Life is precious, giving it your all is preferable to withering and dying even before you fall off this mortal coil.
Virginia Alison
Birth our night into dayAnd bathe it clean,So that beloved things can glowTogether in a litter of light.
Scott Hastie
Saying of the ProphetObjectsIt is your attachment to objects which make you blind and deaf.
Idries Shah
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
Alain de Botton
How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?’Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,’ said Maladict patiently.Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,’ said the sergeant.No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir.
Terry Pratchett
It is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
Evelyn Underhill
What makes the Arabs suitable candidates for democracy is their heritage as human beings, not their specific cultural or historical antecedents.
Gwynne Dyer
At last God caught his eye.
Harry Secombe
Of two duties we must choose the greater, though of two sins we must choose neither (556).
Richard Baxter
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Douglas Adams
For Magic to happen in our lives, we need to be open minded about magical things happening
Steven Aitchison
You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself - and how little I deserve it.
W.S. Gilbert
Growing up in a cathedral precinct, what did I know of the absurdities of communism, of how brave man and women in bleak and remote penal colonies were reduced to thinking day by day of nothing else beyond their own survival?
Ian McEwan
Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.
Salman Rushdie
You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.
Lionel Shriver
Did you see the frightened ones,Did you hear the falling bombs,Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter in the promise of a brave new world unfurlled beaneath the clear blue skies.Good bye blue skies.
Roger Waters
All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act out of your noble instincts are over. Except of course, you here in Europe don't yet seem to know it.
Kazuo Ishiguro
They go to Paris to learn how to make bombs and they come back having learned only how to write poetry, which they think is more explosive.
Rana Dasgupta
With great power comes great dissipation.
Timothy Poston
In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.
Lionel Shriver
When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become.
Julian Barnes
In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price.You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple.
Ellis Peters
I believe that being happy is the only important thing. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or torturous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
Joanne Harris
As he spoke, I had the mental image of a small boy switching on the nightlight, not because he wants to be able to find his parents during the night, but because he fears his parents will forget him - lose him - in the dark.
Stephen Grosz
We can say the brotherhood of man, and pretend that we include the sisterhood of women, but we know that we don't. Folklore has it that women only congregate to bitch an absent member of their group, and continue to do so because they are to well aware of the consequences if they stay away. It's meant to be a joke, but like jokes about mothers-in-law it is founded in bitter truth.
Germaine Greer
Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which it went about marketing its products. Grief was the only rational response to the news that an employee had spent three months devising a supermarket promotion based on an offer of free stickers of cartoon characters called the Fimbles. Why had the grown-ups so churlishly abdicated their responsibilities? Were there not more important ambitions to be met before Death showed himself on the horizon in his hooded black cloak, his scythe slung over his shoulder?
Alain de Botton
As anyone who's ever taken an Ethiopian bus knows, there is an unwritten rule that the windows must remain firmly closed.
Tahir Shah
For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there mustbe between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and shehim.
Virginia Woolf
Yo Mama’s so old, her memory is in black and white.
Oliver Oliver Reed
I didn't appear to need anyone: I could do it all myself. I could do everything. I was both halves: did that mean I was whole?
Rachel Cusk
I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly,he ¯nds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the worldreappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier whowas waiting, with a heavy heart, to su®er and die in battle. But suddenlythe luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone burstsout singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland werecrouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they °y pell-mell upthe hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will.
Richard Adams
A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn’t see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald.
Jon Ronson
The mystic's idea of deliberately stupefying and stultifying himself is an "abomination unto the Lord." This, by the way, does not conflict with the rules of Yoga. That kind of suppression is comparable to the restrictions in athletic training, or diet in sickness.
Aleister Crowley
Dogs own space and cats own time.
Nicola Griffith
The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't
Yahtzee Croshaw
Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.
Julius Charles Hare
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself and one for helping others
Audrey Hepburn
Between the lines of every book the writer reveals their own secrets.
Chloe Thurlow
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
George Orwell
God is in the world or nowhere creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine of God and that participation is his immortality ....
Alfred North Whitehead
It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true.
Idries Shah
It is not for you to determine your purpose, the reason for your existence. You discover your purpose by asking the Creator why he created you!
Pedro Okoro
When the self is not engaged in apprehending objects it becomes aware of itself.
Walter Terence Stace
Consider and then act, don't react. A worthy opponent will calculate his move to entice a response from you. Make your own play.
R.D. Ronald
Congenial labor is essence of happiness.
Arthur Christopher Benson