Quotes by British Authors - Page 282

It takes all sorts of people to make a world.
Douglas Jerrold
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W.H. Auden
Women have always moaned about men...but it turns out that their deepest complaints are reserved for one another, because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous, and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex--loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love....
Salman Rushdie
For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.
Elizabeth von Arnim
As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along his thoughts turned to the Farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now.Yes, the Farmer Gibberty had once been a real living man, like himself. And so had millions of others, whose names he had never heard. And one day he himself would be a prisoner, confined between the walls of other people's memory. And then he would cease even to be that, and become nothing but a few words cut in stone. What would these words be, he wondered.
Hope Mirrlees
Waiting is one of the great arts.
Margery Allingham
Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. just so a Party-spokesman might have labeled departure from the misery of the Fuhrer's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery .... Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the "quisling" to the resistance of the patriot.
J.R.R. Tolkien
It's really best not to tell people when you feel bad. Growing up is about keeping secrets, and pretending everything is fine.
Caitlin Moran
People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie ``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher
John Lennon
Be a dog, but don't be a younger brother.Proverb.
Idries Shah
A person cannot tell the truth, if they don't live the truth & they can't live the truth, if they don't know the truth_ ♥ Cutting Truths
Michael Levy
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Bertrand Russell
There is no bad.. nor good.. there just is.. and that is the present moment. How does that look.. depends on where you are along the journey.. Blink.. and the perception can change.
Jonathan Bailey
When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy - if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this easily managed.
C.S. Lewis
Do you ever make silly mistakes? It is one of my very few creative activities.
Len Deighton
(Canada) - the most parochial nationette on earth ... I have been living in this sanctimonious icebox ... painting portraits of the opulent Methodists of Toronto. Methodism and money in this city have produced a sort of hell of dullness.
Wyndham Lewis
And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get insidea book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wantedto be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed infor ever.
Peter Ackroyd
Don't normal people run in the rain? Even abnormal people, most of them anyway, the only people I can think of who walk in the rain are tree buffers, bag ladies, and total psychos.
Lisa O'Donnell
The soul of a child is the loveliest flower that grows in the garden of God.
Elizabeth George
I need to know how you did it it. I did it, said Sweeney, with the air of one confiding a huge secret, witch panache and style. That's how I did it.(Shadow & Mad Sweeney)
Neil Gaiman
In dividing the light, things are seen. And we notice ourselves.
John Allison
You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you.
Nick Hornby
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
Bertrand Russell
You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since--on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God Bless you, God forgive you!
Charles Dickens
I give you the end of a golden string,Only wind it into a ball,It will lead you in at Heaven's gateBuilt in Jerusalem's wall.
William Blake
One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history—or sometimes the lack of it. You're playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there's baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can't see.
David Byrne
Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes, would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it - I would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.
Charlotte Brontë
Look at us. One bleeding body, one corpse, and a husk who's been half dead for years. No one who took an objective look at this room could think it was anything but too late, Ruth. For all of us.
Sophie Hannah
I was wrong last night. Kyler isn’t just trouble. He’s an apocalypse-level disaster waiting to happen. I need to find some fallout shelter to hide in. And quick.
Siobhan Davis
Sometimes language can't even read the music of meaning.
David Mitchell
Thoughts will lead you in circles. Silence will bring you back to your centre.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
She saw the deepness that was at the edge of France and it made the beach under her feel like a ledge on a cliff.
J.M. Ledgard
Imperfection is underrated. Perfection is overrated.
Helena Bonham Carter
I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.
John Lennon
It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself
Nick Hornby
In the words he’s free, on the page he can be anything. A hero.
Lavie Tidhar
…I have never seen mountains before, and they fill me and oppress me so much that I could not sleep; I must keep awake this first night, and see that they don’t fall on the earth and overwhelm it." [- Miss Benson to her brother, Thurstan]
Elizabeth Gaskell
Our thoughts are not the problem. Our thoughts do not create the psychological smog. It is the way we respond to our thoughts that creates the smog.
Russ Harris
Long ago I decided that at a political meeting the truth usually comes out in just such a speech or a remark ignored at the time because its tone is not that of the meeting. Humorous, or satirical, or even angry or bitter — yet it’s the truth, and all the long speeches and contributions are nonsense.
Doris Lessing
Back at home I spent so much time on my own, but never once felt lonely. Here, even though I see hundreds more people each day, I've never felt lonelier.
Giovanna Fletcher
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Bertrand Russell
Basset Hounds never get scared. We’re fearless, resolute and know how to season a good lamb chop.
Elias Zapple
At first I had not understood Mama. But as I grew older, maybe not wiser, certainly more realistic, I realized she did the best she could. She loved me, in her own way. Not everyone is born to be a mother. It does not come naturally to some women.
Christie Watson
Day 72I remember oranges and you don’t mind me leaving the queue momentarily to find some. When you say, Of course, you reach for my arm in sympathy and recognition. This may be the thing that breaks me today, that stops me in my tracks before driving me forward, turning a corner, making something work, letting everything happen. When I return, you’re touching my yoghurts, reading the ingredients, as though you are making them yours, protecting them in my absence and amusing yourself with the cherry-ness of them. On days like this, I want to take my strangers home with me.
Gemma Seltzer
You must understand: they fear you. There is nothing scarier in their minds than a girl who knows the power of her flames.
Nikita Gill
We Are All One. When we allow ourselves to become aware of this statement in its purest form, we open the doors to reveal the oneness of being. Using the process of conscious evolution we begin to recognize our true underlying identity, for once we have glimpsed the existence of this realm, we then begin to reveal what it is . . . . our true natural state.
J.M. Harrison
What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.
Idries Shah
The day I smile on you flirting with another man is the day you know our relationship is dead.
Sarah Morgan
I want a chance to do it all again. To do it… right.
Joe Abercrombie
Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.
Idries Shah
She was wonderful; no mother could have been more wonderful. But ever after, she demanded that I should not forget it, nor cease to be grateful, nor hold an opinion different from her own, nor even, as I grew older, feel the need for any companionship but hers.
Rosemary Sutcliff
Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.
Susan Fletcher
See money – currency - as the flow of energy and giving that cycles between you, others and me. Now let it flow kindly, fairly and mindfully.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
All of the administrative methods used in professional circles- confidentiality, whatever else is in vogue- are just tools. Tools that governing bodies can deploy, under the guise of fairness. Some of the most corrupt organisations I have worked with have the most finely developed guidelines that they work to. These guidelines gives them more rope to hang their victims.
Guy Mankowski
Princes give rewards with their own hands,But death or punishment by the hands of other.
John Webster
In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.
Bertrand Russell
They call it poetry, what she feels with her mouth closed. By his.
Douglas Self
That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.
D.H. Lawrence
She was Lilith, First Wife of Adam, Queen of the Night, Mother of Demons, Stealer of Children, and he was her Revenant - her undead warrior. And she would use him, and the power of his spear, to destroy her enemies and punish her wayward children.,
Alan Kinross
There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.
Christopher Hitchens