Quotes by British Authors - Page 288

It's a labour of love. And you are both the labour and the love.
David Hieatt
Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole.
J.K. Rowling
Happy? Most of the time? Happiness is always a fleeting thing," he said, "It never rests upon anyone as a permanent state, though many of us persist in believing in the foolish idea that if this would just happen or that we would be happy for the rest of our lives. I know moments of happiness just as most other people do. Perhaps I have learned to find it in ways that would pass some people by. I feel the summer heat here at this moment and see the trees and the water and hear that invisible gull overhead. I feel the novelty of having company when I usually come here alone. And this moment brings me happiness.
Mary Balogh
To return to the general analysis of the Rosicrucian outlook. Magic was a dominating factor, working as a mathematics-mechanics in the lower world, as celestial mathematics in the celestial world, and as angelic conjuration in the supercelestial world. One cannot leave out the angels in this world view, however much it may have been advancing towards the scientific revolution. The religious outlook is bound up with the idea that penetration has been made into higher angelic spheres in which all religions were seen as one; and it is the angels who are believed to illuminate man's intellectual activities.In the earlier Renaissance, the magi had been careful to use only the forms of magic operating in the elemental or celestial spheres, using talismans and various rituals to draw down favourable influences from the stars. The magic of a bold operator like Dee, aims beyond the stars, aims at doing the supercelestial mathematical magic, the angel-conjuring magic. Dee firmly believed that he had gained contact with good angels from whom he learned advancement in knowledge. This sense of close contact with angels or spiritual beings is the hallmark of the Rosicrucian. It is this which infuses his technology, however practical and successful and entirely rational in its new understanding of mathematical techniques, with an unearthly air, and makes him suspect as possibly in contact, not with angels, but with devils.
Frances A. Yates
To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words.
Jeanette Winterson
Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?
H. Rider Haggard
One glance of Thine creates a day.
Isaac Watts
I drank in his smell, I'd missed him so much more than I'd realised. Despite dreaming of him every night, besides my secret habit of writing Honour Hussain in curled scripts on every scrap piece of paper, I surprised myself by how much I needed him.
Ruth Ahmed
Those who cannot conquer must bend the knee. They must find strength, or serve those of us who have. You are my generals. I will send you out: my hunting dogs, my wolves with iron teeth. When a city closes its gates in fear, you will destroy it. When they make roads and walls, you will cut them, pull down the stones. When a man raises a sword or bow against your men, you will hang him from a tree. Keep Karakorum in your minds as you go. This white city is the heart of the nation, but you are the right arm, the burning brand. Find me new lands, gentlemen. Cut a new path. Let their women weep a sea of tears and I will drink it all.
Conn Iggulden
Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
Samuel Johnson
...victory does not come to men who listen to their fears.
Bernard Cornwell
I think a servant of the enemy would look fairer and feel fouler. -Frodo Baggins
J.R.R. Tolkien
Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions.
M.M. Kaye
Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.
A.C. Grayling
The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being- it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. I human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
Graham Greene
Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.
Iain Pears
Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.
Jeanette Winterson
Earlier today I had sex with a monkey and then roasted and ate it with a glass of choir boys' piss. I like to get in the mood.
Peter Milligan
Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.
John le Carré
She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress in both drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she ever would submit to... She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.
Jane Austen
A total stranger, and one not of one's sex, is often the least prejudiced judge.
John Fowles
... the sort of smiles used at weddings, turned on very carefully to half pressure to prevent them wearing out.
R.C. Sherriff
Arthur managed to speak to his grandmother [Queen Eleanor of England], demanding that she evacuate the castle with all her possessions and then go peaceably wherever she wished, for he wanted to show nothing but honour to her person. The Queen replied that she would not leave it, but if he behaved as a courtly gentlemen, he would quit this place, for he would find plenty of castles to attack other than the one she was in.
Alison Weir
you will rise.and are you less of a woman for this? nowhat is woman?woman is this—enduring.listen girl, you will survive this–you will.but what fool said you had to do it silently?here is a tip—scream
Salma Deera
Ye mustn't be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.
Terry Pratchett
This concern with the basic condition of freedom -- the absence of physical constraint -- is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free -- to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.
Aldous Huxley
How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?
Virginia Woolf
Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art
David Toop
The world moves fast, and so do the bees. Can we find the stillness to see them?
Hattie Ellis
I had carried on when all I wanted was to be dead. I had stayed alive for other people. I never stayed alive for myself. I cannot begin to describe the intensity of that effort.
Sally Brampton
Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him.
Philippa Gregory
Depressed states can make us feel like we're constantly fighting against ourselves but we must engage in that fight for ourselves.
Sam Owen
Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.
Terry Pratchett
I was brought up in a Christian environment where, because God had to be given pre-eminence, nothing else was allowed to be important. I have broken through to the position that because God exists, everything has significance.
Evangeline Paterson
Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The Sufis say, "This is not a religion; it is religion
Idries Shah
Our lives are spent sailing in the mist, hoping for a burst of sunlight that can make sense of who we are.
David Gemmell
Whatever you are by nature keep to it never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.
Sydney Smith
When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.
Vera Brittain
One of the most dangerous of literary ventures is the little, shy, unimportant heroine whom none of the other characters value. The danger is that your readers may agree with the other characters.
C.S. Lewis
The notion that life could be any different - that it could be better - becomes inconceivable. You forget how good it was to be normal. Worst of all, you come to believe that you prefer it this way.
Emma Woolf
Tha know where thy are we' ferrets. Ya never know where ya are we' lasses
Gervase Phinn
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
John le Carré
The best way to move forward is to stop
Benny Bellamacina
Desire is insatiable as death, but He who fills all in all can fill it. The capacity of our wishes who can measure? But the immeasurable wealth of God can more than overflow it.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.
Terry Eagleton
To see a shadow and think it is a tree-that is a pity but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.
Phyllis Bottome
And I looked,' Pyrlig said to me, 'and I saw a pale horse, and the rider's name was death.' I just stared in amazement. 'It's in the gospel book,' he explained sheepishly, 'and it just cam to mind.
Bernard Cornwell
And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.
Anthony Trollope
I don't drink coffee I take tea my dearI like my toast done on one sid
Sting
We live in a world packed with desensitising forces, that strip the world of magic. The world is full of negativity, but we fight back with positivity. We're inspired by oceans, forests, animals, Marx Brothers films. We can't help but project uplifting vibrations, because we love each other so much and get off on playing together.
Dave Thompson
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude.
Samuel Johnson
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
George Eliot
Most books are so well written they barely have any effect on the reader’s senses
Steve Aylett
I'm a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I'm all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance to not take the wrong road.
Benedict Cumberbatch
   Susan poured herself out some more wine. She said:   "You're nice. You must come and see me some time. I live miles away from anywhere with my father. You'll like him."   "Tell me about him."   "He's a curious little man with a walrus moustache."   "What does he do?"   "He's a failure."   "Where does he fail?"   "Oh, he doesn't any longer," she said. "He's a retired failure, you see. You must meet him."   "I'd like to.
Anthony Powell
I know your eyes in the morning sunI feel you touch me in the pouring rainAnd the moment that you wander far from meI wanna feel you in my arms again
Bee Gees
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.
G.K. Chesterton
Critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.
Benjamin Disraeli
But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.
D.H. Lawrence