Quotes by British Authors - Page 30

The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.
Jude Morgan
Grown-up people find it difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy.
E Nesbit
Spiritual counselling is helping people find the deep root of stillness in themselves, which is also a connection to everything else.
Jay Woodman
The journey of the Freedom Seeker isn’t always easy. But it is essential, and it is urgent, for it is the path to coming alive again.
Beth Kempton
Life’s more science-fictiony by the day.
David Mitchell
Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.
Gary Oldman
A new heart for a New Year, always!
Charles Dickens
These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began-Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man.
Rudyard Kipling
It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.
P.G. Wodehouse
She looked at them with shining eyes. Her chin went up. She said: "You regard it as impossible that a sinner should be struck down by the wrath of God! I do not!" The judge stroked his chin. He murmured in a slightly ironic voice: "My dear lady, in my experience of ill-doing, Providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals-and the process is often fraught with difficulties. There are no short cuts.
Agatha Christie
Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name— Baraqel. I didn’t like him much.
Mark Lawrence
As a pauper, the obvious destination for James Tilly Matthews was the Bethlem Hospital, already long known in popular slang as Bedlam. The principal public asylum in London, it had accepted dangerous and insane paupers as 'objects of charity' for centuries, and was proud of the claim that it had never turned anyone away.
Mike Jay
Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family who attended universities were cured of long ago.
Neil Gaiman
They had always dreamed of a large family but have now realized that they would be equally blessed to have even one child.
Jane Green
It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal's voice for a god's. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a man's.
C.S. Lewis
It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger.
Alexander McCall Smith
There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.
Thomas Hardy
The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
Benjamin Disraeli
Mr. Thorton love Margaret! Why, Margraret would never think of him, I'm sure! Such a thing has never entered her head." "Entering her heart would do.
Elizabeth Gaskell
When the road ahead seems impossible, start the engine
Benny Bellamacina
Love is. the flower of life and blossoms unexpectedly and without law and must be plucked where it is found and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
D.H. Lawrence
If I wish to kiss you, I will. No priest, no father, and no god will stop me.
Jayne Castel
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
Bill Bryson
A moment when the worst had already happened, so there was nothing left to worry about. I wanted to stop forever in that pause between cause and effect. A place where I didn’t have to be responsible for everybody all of the time.
Jo Furniss
A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?""Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.
Antony Jay
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
Rudyard Kipling
When something needs to be said, I'll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me to keep quiet.
Elif Shafak
Quick, somebody call the caretaker!’ Gemma’s stage voice rang out loud and clear. ‘There’s some trash here that needs to be taken out.’ She earned a chorus of laughs as she walked towards us, then came to a standstill right beside me. ‘Christ, it reeks, too,’ she said, pinching her nose. ‘What did you do, Malice? Douse yourself in the whole bottle? Oh, never mind. I don’t expect you to have heard of the adage “less is more”.
Aurelia B. Rowl
Stolen kisses are always sweetest.
Leigh Hunt
... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.
Julian Barnes
This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter what the specific human story may be, told to remain emotionally disinvested as far as possible so as to avoid preferential treatment of one person over another - and needing to follow that advice to avoid being swamped by empathy for fellow human beings in distress. The functionary becomes a mixture of Zimbardo's prison guards and the experimenter himself, under siege from without while at the same time following an inflexible rubric set down by those higher up the hierarchical chain, people whose job description makes them responsible, but who in turn see themselves as serving the general public as a non-specific entity and believe or have been told that only strict adherence to a system can produce impartial fairness. Fairness is supposed to be vested in the code: no human can or should make the system fairer by exercising judgement. In other words, the whole thing creates a collective responsibility culminating in a blameless loop. Everyone assumes that it's not their place to take direct personal responsibility for what happens; that level of vested individual power is part of the previous almost feudal version of responsibility. The deindividuation is actually to a certain extent the desired outcome, though its negative consequences are not.
Nick Harkaway
Howl pointed a shaky hand up toward the canopy of his bed. “That’s why I love spiders. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, again.’ I keep trying,” he said with great sadness. “But I brought it on myself by making a bargain some years ago, and I know I shall never be able to love anyone properly now.”The water running out of Howl’s eyes was definitely tears now.
Diana Wynne Jones
At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
Rudyard Kipling
We are not lonely, because we chose to be alone.We are not lost, because we chose to disappear.
Steven Wilson
I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.
Muriel Spark
When we live in the past, there is no future.
Anthony T.Hincks
A Book “Now” - said a good book unto me -“Open my pages and you shall seeJewels of wisdom and treasures fine,Gold and silver in every line,And you may claim them if you but willOpen my pages and take your fill.“Open my pages and run them o’er,Take what you choose of my golden store.Be you greedy, I shall not care -All that you seize I shall gladly spare;There is never a lock on my treasure doors,Come - here are my jewels, make them yours!“I am just a book on your mantel shelf,But I can be part of your living self;If only you’ll travel my pages through,Then I will travel the world with you.As two wines blended make better wine,Blend your mind with these truths of mine.“I’ll make you fitter to talk with men,I’ll touch with silver the lines you pen,I’ll lead you nearer the truth you seek,I’ll strengthen you when your faith grows weak -This place on your shelf is a prison cell,Let me come into your mind to dwell!
Edgar A. Guest
A fool I was to sleep at noon, And wake when night is chilly Beneath the comfortless cold moon; A fool to pluck my rose too soon, A fool to snap my lily. My garden-plot I have not kept; Faded and all-forsaken,I weep as I have never wept: Oh it was summer when I slept, It's winter now I waken. Talk what you please of future spring And sun-warm'd sweet to-orrow: Stripp'd bare of hope and everything, No more to laugh, no more to sing, I sit alone with sorrow.
Christina Rossetti
Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall at last unveil.
John Ruskin
But it is infamous that they have not told you!’ declared Eustacie. ‘Je n’en reviendrai jamais!’‘If it’s all the same to you, miss, I’d just as soon you’d talk in a Christian language,’ said Mr. Stubbs.
Georgette Heyer
Loyalty could come only of exchange and mutual regard.
Ariana Franklin
People see stories everywhere," Regine says. "That's what my father used to say. We take random events and we string them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true." She glances back at Seth. "We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
Patrick Ness
It's funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & all the rest of it: then at thirty one finds one is a great clumping brute, incapable of appreciating anything finer than a kiss or a kick, roaring our one's hypocrisies at the top of one's voice, thick skinned as a rhino. At least I do.
Philip Larkin
Don't move! I want to forget you just the way you are.
Henny Youngman
Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
Neil Gaiman
I had rather have God for my banker than all the Rothschilds.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
She expressed an opinion that the happiness of a woman in Paradise is beneath the soles of her husband's feet,' he enlightened humorously, seemingly not at all averse to her obvious desire to be comforted.
Margaret Rome
Saying of the ProphetWomenWomen are the twin-halves of men.
Idries Shah
Sometimes I think that we're the aliens.
Anthony T.Hincks
Seems to me-" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed....
Philip Pullman
I seemed to still be alive. Which was unexpected. I'd feel good about it when I stopped retching my insides up.
Alwyn Hamilton
Although richer and Number 1 in the charts at this very moment, I’ve come full circle; once again I am the lanky, ginger, friendless geek.- Egg
Jamie Scallion
The ability to discern truth comes from learning, growing, and understanding the Bible.
Elizabeth George
As the new year began, [Patricia Highsmith] felt completely paralysed, incapable of reading or picking up the phone. 'I can feel my grip loosening on my self,' she wrote. 'It is like strength failing in the hand that holds me above an abyss.' She wished there was a more awful-sounding word for what she was feeling than simply 'depression'. She wanted to die, she said, but then realised that the best course of action would be to endure the wretchedness until it passed. Her wish was, 'Not to die, but not to exist, simply, until this is over'.
Andrew Wilson
Shakespeare shook his head and sunk his chin into his ruff, making him look more owl-like than ever. “I have written about other worlds often enough. I have said what I can say. There are many kinds of reality. This is but one kind.
Jeanette Winterson
Do you remember me telling you we are practicing non-verbal spells, Potter?""Yes," said Harry stiffly."Yes, sir.""There's no need to call me "sir" Professor."The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying.
J.K. Rowling
Individuals learn faster than institutions and it is always the dinosaur's brain that is the last to get the new messages.
Hazel Henderson
Sir Henry fixed him with a keen eye.'Odd name, Tom Skatt - eh?''Thats right''You don't think we could be related?'Tom looked up at his great-great-great-uncle and smiled.'I don't think so''No,' grinned Sir Henry "no, of course not
Henry Chancellor
The greater the truth the greater the libel.
Lord Ellenborough