Quotes by British Authors - Page 31

[T]hat mutual jealousy, that intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifully dull.
H.G.Wells
She looked at him for an age, and he read nothing short of love on her face. It warmed him to the core he'd thought dead, and scared the crap out of him.
Dianna Hardy
As in diamonds so in batting, perfection requires flawlessness and nowhere is a batting imperfection more quickly recognised than in the dropped catch. For this reason any innings worthy of consideration deserves to have all its flaws studied to establish whether or not it is the genuine gem or just masquerading as one under the glitter of big hitting or weight of runs.
Patrick Ferriday
Sleeping AtlantisSilent cool watersdancing upon her skin ~silent cool waterushering dreams within...
Muse
Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.
Jean Rhys
Comedy, of course, lives for serious moments.
Glen Duncan
False happiness is like false money it passes for a long time as well as the true and serves some ordinary occasions but when it is brought to the touch we find the lightness and alloy and feel the loss.
Alexander Pope
All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.
Charles Dickens
Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only that's so old-fashioned.
John Galsworthy
From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease. Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered. The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials. As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.
Sarah Helm
Because all the waters of the ocean won't fill a bucket with a hole in it. And that's their fall, and that's their fellowship. Desire. The hole in the bucket: the gulf of yearning into which the soul empties itself.
Mike Carey
In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.
Anthony Powell
She thought of the last couple of years: the boredom, the narrowness of existence, the dearth of anything to look forward to. Yet now, in a single instant, the curtains had been whipped aside, and the windows been thrown open onto a brillant view that had been there, waiting for her, all the time. A view, moreover, laden with the most marvellous possibilities and opportunities.
Rosamunde Pilcher
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.
Charlie Brooker
Often I have found myself gazing up at clouds – yesterday’s seas and tomorrow’s streams – to think of them as floating on an ultraviolet sea, beyond which is the infinity of space that presents so much wonder and so many questions.
Fennel Hudson
there were moments throughout the whole day when she had to shake herself because she found her thoughts climbing over her like creeping ivy, scratching and biting into her skin and entangling her in their morbid clutch. Because... wasn't ot true now that not only was she not human but she was kind of a 'thing' rather than Jinn? The Seal was an object with no emotion or thought or feeling. It has one purpose. To command the Jinn. What did that really make her then?
Samantha Young
When I look in the mirror,I see me.Who do you see?
Anthony T.Hincks
I was so nearly happy. There remained only a tiny something, something unexplained and inexplicable that buzzed in my ear when the lights were out, like a malarial mosquito.
Jennie Rooney
I needed some space to lay myself out, so that I could decide which pieces I wanted to pick up.
Fennel Hudson
Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar-roses and may-blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed their power, though somewhat to the detriment of your own fingers.
Anne Brontë
I have a definition of success. For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
Benjamin Zander
He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene.
Andrew Marvell
ARTThe world is full of confusion and contradiction. We cannot expect to do anything that is absolutely right. We can only measure rightness by the truth within ourselves. And our own truth will never be quite the same as somebody else's. I wish that I could touch you and be sure that it was the right thing to do. I only want to touch you briefly. Just once so that you will know. We are flesh and blood and full of faults. But we are also full of warmth. The world is full of confusion but there is compassion in its midst. communication via simple touch can transmit so much of us in just one minute. Like a painting or a piece of music. I want to touch your soul. I only wish I could be sure it was the right thing to do.
Jay Woodman
His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among the seven-year-olds.
Alexander McCall Smith
I know,” he says, and it’s the strangest thing. I can tell he’s smiling, slow and syrupy, when he says it.
Charlotte Stein
Even the most impassioned devotee of the ghost story would admit that the taste for it is slightly abnormal, a survival, perhaps, from adolescence, a disease of deficiency suffered by those whose lives and imaginations do not react satisfactorily to normal experience and require an extra thrill
L.P. Hartley
I want to spank you, but also want to know you want it. I need to hear it sweetheart, tell me you deserve it…
Felicity Brandon
The ordinary man so very rarely questions the principles in which he has been brought up, that he is usually willing, whenever he has a feeling that he ought to do 'x', to say on this ground that he ought to do 'x'.
R.M. Hare
Why change? Everyone has his own style. When you have found it, you should stick to it.
Audrey Hepburn
Spring, spring! Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1805.
George Orwell
You can have a lot of fun with rhinos
Wilkie Martin
There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli
There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There is must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.
H.G.Wells
Held tight as it seems to you in the finite, committed to the perpetual rhythmic changes, the unceasing flux of "natural" life— compelled to pass on from state to state, to grow, to age, to die— there is yet, as you discovered in the first exercise of recollection, something in you which endures through and therefore transcends this world of change. This inhabitant, this mobile spirit, can spread and merge in the general consciousness, and gather itself again to one intense point of personality. It has too an innate knowledge of— an instinct for— another, greater rhythm, another order of Reality, as yet outside its conscious field; or as we say, a capacity for the Infinite. This capacity, this unfulfilled craving, which the cunning mind of the practical man suppresses and disguises as best it can, is the source of all your unrest. More, it is the true origin of all your best loves and enthusiasms, the inspiring cause of your heroisms and achievements; which are but oblique and tentative efforts to still that strange hunger for some final object of devotion, some completing and elucidating vision, some total self-donation, some great and perfect Act within which your little activity can be merged.
Evelyn Underhill
It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war.
H.G.Wells
An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.
G.K. Chesterton
I am aware I sound like a Marxist Victor Meldrew but, guess what, I'm over 50 and I don't give a fuck.
Mark Thomas
Strength is not something you have, it's something you find.
Emma Smith
If the existentialists are right, that life is meaningless, and if we acknowledge that, we are better equipped to find pleasure in small things.
Chloe Thurlow
Imagination is the air of mind.
Philip James Bailey
I never met your likeness. Jane: you please me, and you master me - you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced - conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph _I_ can win.
Charlotte Brontë
Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing.
Mary Balogh
I fall hard and I fall fast, and I wouldn't change it for anything.
Eve Newton
He was driven to use the prerogatives of his profession, to act the parson.
E.M. Forster
Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
William Cobbett
Nowadays, it is true, we have mass media and expert propaganda to spread suspicion and fear. But the people I mean—and they form the great majority—are not suspicious and fearful, as many educated and more influential persons are. Propaganda has not made them accept the Bomb. We protesters, though we may have won over some of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, have not made them reject it. They remain profoundly, astonishingly, shockingly indifferent.
J.B. Priestley
The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.
Ricky Gervais
Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do.
Terry Pratchett
I have tried to teach you the wonders of the spiritual world......I have tried to show how we mortals can attain such wisdom......and I've decided you're a pillock.]
Roger Kettle
To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.
Patrick Ness
The young Cambridge group the group that stood for "freedom" and flannel trousers and flannel shirts open at the neck and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy and a whispering murmuring sort of voice and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner.
D.H. Lawrence
What’s Albert going to do?” a boy named Jim demanded. “Where’s Albert?”Albert stepped from an inconspicuous position off to one side. He mounted the steps, moving carefully still, not entirely well even now.He carefully chose a position equidistant between Caine and Sam.“What should we do, Albert?” a voice asked plaintively.Albert didn’t look out at the crowd except for a quick glance up, like he was just making sure he was pointed in the right direction. He spoke in a quiet, reasonable monotone. Kids edged closer to hear.“I’m a businessman.”“True.” Toto.“My job is organizing kids to work, taking the things they harvest or catch, and redistributing them through a market.”“And getting the best stuff for yourself,” someone yelled to general laughter.“Yes,” Albert acknowledged. “I reward myself for the work I do.”This blunt admission left the crowd nonplussed.“Caine has promised that if I stay here he won’t interfere. But I don’t trust Caine.”“No, he doesn’t,” Toto agreed.“I do trust Sam. But . . .”And now you could hear a pin drop.“But . . . Sam is a weak leader.” He kept his eyes down. “Sam is the best fighter ever. He’s defended us many times. And he’s the best at figuring out how to survive. But Sam”— Albert now turned to him—“You are too humble. Too willing to step aside. When Astrid and the council sidelined you, you put up with it. I was part of that myself. But you let us push you aside and the council turned out to be useless.”Sam stood stock-still, stone-faced.“Let’s face it, you’re not really the reason things are better here, I am,” Albert said. “You’re way, way braver than me, Sam. And if it’s a battle, you rule. But you can’t organize or plan ahead and you won’t just put your foot down and make things happen.”Sam nodded slightly. It was hard to hear. But far harder was seeing the way the crowd was nodding, agreeing. It was the truth. The fact was he’d let the council run things, stepped aside, and then sat around feeling sorry for himself. He’d jumped at the chance to go off on an adventure and he hadn’t been here to save the town when they needed it.“So,” Albert concluded, “I’m keeping my things here, in Perdido Beach. But there will be free trading of stuff between Perdido Beach and the lake. And Lana has to be allowed to move freely.”Caine bristled at that. He didn’t like Albert laying down conditions.Albert wasn’t intimidated. “I feed these kids,” he said to Caine. “I do it my way.”Caine hesitated, then made a tight little bow of the head.“I want you to say it,” Albert said with a nod toward Toto.Sam saw panic in Caine’s eyes. If he lied now the jig would be up for him. Toto would call him out, Albert would support Sam, and the kids would follow Albert’s lead.Sam wondered if Caine was just starting to realize what Sam had known for some time: if anyone was king, it was neither Sam nor Caine, it was Albert.
Michael Grant
You have found love in your heart - and out of small changes come great things.
Alan Kinross
Except that love - that mysterious, vast, all-encompassing power - could not possibly be contained in a single word.
Mary Balogh
Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for.
Friedrich A. Hayek
Emotion,' she told him, 'is not a reliable guide for our words and actions.''There you are wrong,' he said. 'Deep, true emotion is our surest guide. We make our greatest mistake when we allow our heads to rules ours hearts.''Emotion is our human weakness.,' she said, 'reason our strength.''And love,' he said, 'is our destiny.
Mary Balogh
With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! - and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
All the supernatural yarns need a realist explanation and a supernatural one.
David Mitchell
I should send my bees ashore for you, upon my sacred honour.
Patrick O'Brian
the whole point of the wish business was to see to it that what the client got was exactly what he asked for and exactly what he didn't really want.
Terry Pratchett