Quotes by British Authors - Page 291

I cannot forget the figures of Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor and Saddam Hussein, who made terrified fiefdoms out of their "own" people and mounds of corpses on the territory of their neighbours. I was glad to see each of these monsters brought to trial, and think the achievement should (and one day will) form part of the battle‑honours of British Labour. Many of the triumphant pelters and taunters would have left the dictators and aggressors in place: they too will have their place in history.
Christopher Hitchens
It does not matter how much we distance ourselves, how far we run - the past always shadows us.
Jayne Castel
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
Joseph Conrad
People who make some other person part of their job are dangerous.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.
Idries Shah
Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
She's always scorned his squeamishness, citing the replacement of his vagina with a dick. Joon thinks that's invasion of a far more nail-biting nature. She has no idea. It was fucking heaven. He'd do it again a million times over. And it's one hell of a long way from chopping open your head for the sake of more tech.
Ren Warom
Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.
Joseph Conrad
I would rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 5 seconds.
Russell T. Davies
So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
John Locke
If thou wilt be well with GOD, and have grace to rule thy life, and come to the joy of love: this name JESUS, fasten it so fast in thy heart that it come never out of thy thought. And when thou speakest to Him, and through custom sayst, JESUS, it shall be in thine ear, joy; in thy mouth, honey; and in thine heart, melody: for men shall think joy to hear that name be named, sweetness to speak it, mirth and song to think it. If thou thinkest (on) JESUS continually, and holdest it firmly, it purges thy sin, and kindles thine heart; it clarifies thy soul, it removes anger and does away slowness. It wounds in love and fulfils charity. It chases the devil, and puts out dread. It opens heaven, and makes a contemplative man. Have JESUS in mind, for that puts all vices and phantoms out from the lover.
Richard Rolle
Talk is free but the wise man chooses when to spend his words.
Neil Gaiman
He stared at her, knowing with certainty thathe was falling in love. He looked the other way, Her face triggered through his heart, forcing him to look back, and admire that beauty!!Soon He pulled her close andkissed her beneath a blanket of stars,wondering how on earth he'd been luckyenough to find her... Wait it was morning, the dream was actually over !!
Douglas Self
England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.
George Orwell
Strength of my heart, I need not fail,Not mind to fear but to obey,With such a Leader, who could quail?Thou art as Thou wert yesterday.Strength of my heart, I rest in Thee,Fulfil Thy purposes through me.
Amy Carmichael
It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.
George Orwell
I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”“Yes,” said Harriet, “but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel.”“I don’t think that matters, provided one doesn’t try to persuade one’s self into appropriate feelings.
Dorothy L. Sayers
...he was past youth, but had not reachedmiddle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him,and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-lookingyoung gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioninghim against his will, and offering my services unasked. I hadhardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one.I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance,gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate inmasculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neitherhad nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should haveshunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that isbright but antipathetic.
Charlotte Brontë
A president should be approachable; understanding of people's problems and needs; he should be fair and equitable; he should listen with an open mind and a closed mouth; he shouldn't make a decision without all the facts and above all else, he must be honest to the people.Anything else and he shouldn't be president.
Anthony T.Hincks
Control or be controlled are the choices that will make life different.
Steven Redhead
Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated." "Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing." The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient.
Charlotte Brontë
What we make is more important than what we are particularly if making is our profession.
Dorothy L. Sayers
The dead know everything, but don't give a damn.
Joanne Harris
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.
Richard Dawkins
she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she ws in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeming to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments or peaks, then nothing had "happened" to her for a long time; and she could look forward to nothing but a dwindling away from full household activities and getting old.
Doris Lessing
Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed countries now live in a perpetual state of mental hyperactivity with overactive imaginations anyway, so throwing drugs in on top of this usually just leads to confusion and a further loss of focus.Plus as the real Shamans say, if you really do succeed in opening a door with a drug it will thereafter open at will and most such substances give all they will ever give on the first attempt.
Peter J. Carroll
She knew that she had a tendency to allow her mind to wander, but surely that's what made the world interesting. One thought led to another, one memory triggered another. How dull it would be, she thought, not to be reminded of the interconnectedness of everything, how dull for the present not to evoke the past, for here not to imply there.
Alexander McCall Smith
It's simple. Mankind is a sorry excuse for living creatures. They are cruel, cold, merciless, selfish, heartless, wasteful, greedy, and destructive. But the list goes on. I can spend all night telling you what’s wrong with them, but why bother?
Charles Lee
I'm often called in as a coach and speaker to motivate staff, teams, the public and leaders. The key to this is simple; you cannot truly, deeply and sustainably motivate anybody until you know what their motives are...what motivates them...?
Rasheed Ogunlaru
He had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. If they had been under Richard’s direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his enemies.
Charles Dickens
Political corruption works by having an equally corrupt legal system to protect it.
Steven Magee
And I saw her as a sad thirtieth child of Valentine that fell, not as Lucifer rebelling against God, but because she too passionately wanted to be united with him! All things in excess become sin.
Lawrence Durrell
I’m looking for mushrooms. Giant ones, specifically of the deadly poisonous variety.”“How come?”“Monday is Teacher Appreciation Day, and I was thinking of making a nice quiche for Miss Keener.
P.J. Bracegirdle
It's no use crying over spilt milkWhat’s done, is done.
James Howell
Looking back now, I would say that this was one of the first valuable lessons I learned, and one that would be useful in my future line of work. Sometimes things go wrong. It is inevitable. But it is a mistake to waste time and energy worrying about events that you cannot influence. Once they have happened, let them go.
Anthony Horowitz
Well…it’s whether you want to face certain death by taking a risk on the other route or almost certain death by scaling the walls?” she replied. “Therefore, for me, considering our options, it’s a no brainer.
Adele Rose
The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.
Benedict Cumberbatch
The experience of history should lead us to hope and strive to make the world better, not to despair and resign ourselves to fate.
Alan Beattie
the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.
Charlotte Brontë
Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
Robert Browning
Abortions are never seen as a positive thing, as any other operation to remedy a potentially life-ruining condition would.
Caitlin Moran
You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she accepted you. As she stood there in front of you the other day, she plunged into it. She said 'Why not?' to something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked where she had never looked hitherto.
Henry James
Under the stars,I tried to sleep,but for once in my life couldn't.My mutant super power-the ability to nod off at at the drop of a hat,any time,anywhere-had deserted me.
James Lovegrove
To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
Aldous Huxley
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
Embrace the pain to inherit the gain.
Habeeb Akande
When people show you who they are, believe them.
Jane Green
A hare's movement seems plagued by the flicks and judders of restrained energy, as if carrying an ache that can only be relieved by running. The rest of the time it's as though they're absorbing the earth's energy, tapped into a ley line, shivering with pent-up static
Rob Cowen
With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.
Sarah Waters
Some say they stand on the shoulders of giants. True. But have they ever tried walking like one?
Jill Telford
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
Bertrand Russell
After twenty annual visits I am still surprised each time I return to see this giant asparagus bed of alabaster and rose and green skyscrapers.
Cecil Beaton
At Bow Street Magistrates' Court the essential facts were established. The man's name was James Tilly Matthews. He was a pauper of the south London parish of Camberwell. He had a wife and a young family. He appeared to be of unsound mind.
Mike Jay
At that moment the ghost dance seems to Zinnia like the relationship of two people who never quite consummate the love they feel for each other.
Glenn Haybittle
Sim sighed. "like Ross always said: Wish in one hand,shit in the other,and see which hand fills up first.
Keith Gray
I'm only happy when I forget to exist. When just my eyes or my ears or my skin exist.
John Fowles
I have argued that the God of the Bible, and especially of the Gospels, can be understood only as God-in-public, and that methods of criticism designed to keep this rumor quiet need to be challenged by appropriate historical, theological, and political critique and replaced by methods that do justice to the reality of the texts and hence do justice - in the much fuller sense - in the public world that the Gospels demand to address.
N.T. Wright
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
Charles Darwin
Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]
Winston S. Churchill
Hey presto: time travel. You don't need a time machine, it turns out, you just need a friend to laugh like a teenager. Chronology shivers.
Michael Marshall Smith