Quotes by British Authors - Page 28

We are each given a life to show what we can achieve during our time here on Earth.And we are each given a heart to show how we can be compassionate and kind during our time here on Earth.We shouldn't waste either.
Anthony T.Hincks
Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.
R.D. Laing
The generation that bought the most shoes and crippled the moral footing
Dean Cavanagh
Love is like a lost fart. If you have to force it, it's probably shit.
Stephen K. Amos
[She wasn't] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.
Charles Dickens
Love is indeed its own hallucinogenic affecting the mind, heart and mood
Siân Lavinia Anaïs Valeriana
A nation that forgets its past has no future
Sir Winston Churchill
Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.
Charlotte Brontë
You may silence the critics, but you don't silence the pain.
Anthony T.Hincks
Live boldly. Push yourself. Don't settle.
Jojo Moyes
Death for [the Buddhist] is the shadow on the face of life, for the opposite of death is birth, not life; that which is born must die. Life has no opposite, for life goes on; only its forms must change unceasingly. It is life which creates, uses and then destroys each form of life, whether yours or mine or that of the mountain, the empire or the fly.
Christmas Humphreys
My meal arrived. It was a bowl of tepid, green curried water with two spinach leaves floating in it. The waiter called it 'vegetable soup'. I called it inedible slop.
Frank Kusy
Maya repeated the achingly slow process with the remote control in reverse, and in the profound quiet that ensued, looked at Leyla.‘Why are you doing this to me?’Yasmin turned on her mother. ‘She’s not doing anything, she is gay. It’s not a choice. So I think, actually, that you should be telling us why you have such a problem with it.
Shamim Sarif
This one had come to me, though, picked me out. I thought she was trouble from the start. I don't read minds and I can't see the future, but call it instinct or experience, something was prickling my spine.You could call it something else, if you wanted: adolescence, hormones, lust. Being seventeen. That doesn't go away, however long you practice."Hullo," I said politely, warily.She was long and slim and very neatly put together, dark hair tumbling over denim, old worn black jacket and jeans that somehow hadn't faded into grey. They probably didn't dare. Right from the start I saw a focus in her, a determination that must go all the way through, like the writing in a stick of Brighton rock. In another world, another lifetime, I thought she'd have raven-feathers in her hair, a bear's tooth on a thong about her. She'd be the village shaman, talking to spirits, and even the headman would be afraid of her, a little...Seventeen, I told you. She was devastating to me, she was sitting at my table, and I couldn't afford her. Not for a minute.If I'd stood up, if I'd left, if I'd run away...Nah. She would just have come after me. Faster, fitter, and on longer legs. What chance did I ever have?
Ben Macallan
The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)
Alice Jamieson
For to speak the truth, there are but few that care thus to spend their time, but choose rather to be speaking of things to no profit.
John Bunyan
Modify the environmental radiation and you will change the course of evolution.
Steven Magee
Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." ... It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.
C.S. Lewis
I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good.
Richard Curtis
The identification of fantasy is always an attempt to avoid one's own suffering: the identification of art is the sharing in the suffering of another.
W.H. Auden
Mindfulness is about focusing on the magic of the present moment. Rather than fretting about the past or worrying about the future, the aim is to experience life as it unfolds moment by moment. This simple practice is immensely powerful. As we rush through our lives, mindfulness encourages us to stop constantly striving for something new or better and to embrace acceptance and gratitude. This allows us to tap into the joy and wonder in our lives, and to listen to the wisdom of our hearts. This book will show you how to experience small but beautiful moments of mindfulness every day and so guide you along the path to finding more peace and contentment in your life.
Anna Barnes
The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened.
Wyndham Lewis
I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's conversation?""Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder.Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold.""All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
G.K. Chesterton
Even the loneliest and most solitary in the universe... the very cold space dust... will eventually come together to form a star.
G.C. Huxley
I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.
John Fowles
Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allow herself to be manipulated in this way. She stopped herself. Thinking like that was nothing more than coming up with excuses for breaking the diet. Mma Ramotswe was made of sterner stuff than that, and so she persisted.
Alexander McCall Smith
Why do we put our self esteem in the hands of complete strangers?
Helena Bonham Carter
Driving like a man is one of her few foibles.
Elizabeth Wein
You have immense potential to achieve what you desire.
Steven Redhead
There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent.Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man.
P.G. Wodehouse
the past is so hard to shift. It comes with us like a chaperon, standing between us and the newness of the present - the new chance.
Jeanette Winterson
When shall I cease to regret you! – When learn to feel a home elsewhere! – Oh! Happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! – And you, ye well-known trees! – but you will continue the same. – No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer! – No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! – But who will remain to enjoy you?
Jane Austen
You can be drunk on wine.You can be drunk on success.I'm just drunk on the success of my wine.
Anthony T.Hincks
Sexual desire is only the frustrated desire to eat human flesh.
Christopher Frayling
The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur.
Julian Barnes
Water purling between the rocks, weed under the surface like green hair in the wind.
Mark Haddon
Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily."I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
J.M. Barrie
The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.
Helen Mirren
The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.
Charles Dickens
I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?""That is so.""Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."Poirot shrugged his shou
Agatha Christie
In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
John Stuart Mill
Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?
Terry Pratchett
What are acquaintance for, if not to supply the pleasures of gossip?
Zen Cho
A life which has never been laid open in penitence and faith before God has little permanence in eternity.
R.K. Harrison
Amazin'.' he said again. 'He just looks as though he's thinking, right?''Er...yes.''But he's not actually thinking?''Er...no.''So...he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?''Er...yes.'Just like everyone else, then really,' said Ridcully
Terry Pratchett
In war as in life it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed to take up the best alternative open and if so it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
Winston Churchill
Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line.
Helen Oyeyemi
Welcome to BigMistake.comPopulation: untold millons
Claire Cross
There's a sameness to streetlife. On every world I've ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.
Richard K. Morgan
A dwarf will always tell tall stories.
Anthony T.Hincks
Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.
Mark Haddon
Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject - and when he spoke again, it was something totally different.
Jane Austen
If we had more reliable systems of law and governance perhaps our friendship would be shallower.
Kamila Shamsie
Remember: God's grief at the unspeakable things we do to one another is beyond measuring, but so is His mercy. It might seem a terrible thing to say to people who've lost and suffered so much at the hands of hatred and violence. But true courage is not to hate our enemy, any more than to fight and kill him. To love him, to love in the teeth of his hate—that is real bravery. That ought to earn people m-m-medals.
Tony Hendra
They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling. ... They moved closer, deeper and then, for seconds on end, everything stopped. Instead of an ecstatic frenzy, there was stillness. They were stilled not by the astonishing fact of arrival, but by an awed sense of return - they were face to face in the gloom, staring into what little they could see of each other's eyes, and now it was the impersonal that dropped away.
Ian McEwan
Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.
Terry Pratchett
A clever girl may pass through the phase of foolish miss on the way to sensible woman.
Mary Lascelles
First wives are a rite of passage into adult life. In many ways it’s important that first marriages go wrong. That’s how we learn the truth about ourselves.
J.G. Ballard
The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man’s ability to invent which has made human society what it is. The mental processes of inventions are still mysterious. They are rational but not logical, that is to say, not deductive.
Dennis Gabor
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C.S. Lewis