Quotes by British Authors - Page 322

Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.
Idries Shah
It's funny that being human means so many things, man made divisions counter our judgements towards being wary of the "other", this is worrying because the thing that unites us is being human that is what we all are and without lament but with joy we should embrace everybody we would then live in utopia of diversity.
Paul Isaacs
Most of us plateau when we lose the tension between where we are and where we ought to be.
John Gardiner
Life is a progress from want to want not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Samuel Johnson
A man's sexual aim, he had often said to himself, is to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature that is the opposite of these; to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal.
Kingsley Amis
The amount of perfume she had on was like a human sacrifice on Incense Night.
Stephen Moles
There are any number of magical creatures, mostly female, whose singing can bring about horror and death. Sirens, undines, banshees, Bananarama tribute bands...
Simon R. Green
I didn’t bring you up to speak as if your mouth were filled with sewage.
Diane Samuels
It had not hurt his hands at all and the sudden release of energy, twinned with Dom's fall, gave him a sudden lunatic rush of euphoria.
Adam Nevill
Hark the herald angels sing "Glory to the new-born king." Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled!
Charles Wesley
She turned, and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon.
D.H. Lawrence
My mind is not like a neat and tidy garden; it is a vast and untidy wilderness, full of irrelevancies, but with lots of places to wander and get lost.
Roopa Farooki
On their deathbed men will speak true, they say.
J.R.R. Tolkien
It seems to me that there are three principal scales of time, the present moment, a human lifetime, and the eternal. The problem with modern man is not so much that he situates himself in the future of a human lifetime, since he fears death far too much to do that, but rather than he does not situate himself in any of these three scales of time. Instead, he is forever stuck somewhere in-between, this evening, tomorrow morning, next week, next Christmas, in five years’ time. As a result, he has neither the joy of the present moment, nor the satisfied accomplishments of a human lifetime, nor the perspective and immortality of the eternal.
Neel Burton
It was easier to ignore the consideration of paternal genes then than it would be now. We did not then consider ourselves held in the genetic trap. We thought each infant was born pure and new and holy: a gold baby, a luminous lamb. We did not know that certain forms of breast cancer were programmed and almost ineluctable, and we would not have believed you if you had told us that in our lifetime young women would be subjecting themselves to preventative mastectomies.
Margaret Drabble
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour whatever he does whoever he is.
C.S. Lewis
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.
John Maynard Keynes
I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
Harold Macmillan
There was never one truth. Even the Higgs could still be used to prove opposing theories, its mass falling between them on a chart. Besides, I told myself, my breathing heavy, eyes widening until they bulged, I was post-truth.
Olivia Sudjic
--and yet, in my heart, I always knew we loved each other, a part of me understanding that the passion with which we hurt each other came from something strong enough to withstand the blows we inflicted. Looking back, I guess I always felt that we would have time to work things out eventually, not imagining what was to come; that we would one day have to cut all ties and never speak again.
Camilla Way
Most men, if you just tell them what to do in a businesslike fashion, will follow directions without thinking about it. One proceeds on the assumption that they'll do as they're told, and they do.
Lynne Reid Banks
The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.
Daphne du Maurier
have you taken leave of your senses
Charles Dickens
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Alfred Tennyson
Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you to see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?"I said nothing."What colour's a blackbird?" she said."Black""Typical!
David Almond
I'll show you an imaginative re-creation, my fist imaginatively re-creating your fucken face for starters.
Neil Gaiman
It can't be supposed," said Joe. "Tho' I'm oncommon fond of reading, too."Are you, Joe?"Oncommon. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!" he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, "when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, 'Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,' how interesting reading is!
Charles Dickens
If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.
Niall Ferguson
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —And thus we half-men struggle.
Robert Browning
It may be a cat, a bird, a ferret, or a guinea pig, but the chances are high that when someone close to you dies, a pet will be there to pick up the slack. Pets devour the loneliness. They give us purpose, responsibility, a reason for getting up in the morning, and a reason to look to the future. They ground us, help us escape the grief, make us laugh, and take full advantage of our weakness by exploiting our furniture, our beds, and our refrigerator. We wouldn't have it any other way. Pets are our seat belts on the emotional roller coaster of life--they can be trusted, they keep us safe, and they sure do smooth out the ride.
Nick Trout
The most important thing you can do in a relationship is sit down and talk to each other, not with the TV on, or at the cinema, or over a meal, but just you and the other person where you can truly be heard and truly listen to each other
Steven Aitchison
I’ve always been a slow learner in some areas of my life.mostly the areas known as myself. Or maybe I should say ‘selves.’because the fact is, I’ve never, even as a child, felt I’m only one self, only one person. I’ve always felt I’m quite a few more than one. For example, there’s my jokey self, there’s my morose and fed-up self,there’s my lewd and disgusting self. There’s my clever-clogs self, and my fading-violet-who-cant-make-up-her-mind-about-anything self. There’s my untidy-clothes-everywhere-all-over-my-room self, and my manically tidy self when I want my room to be minimalist and Zen to the nth degree. There’s my confidant, arrogant self and my polite and reasonable and good listener self. There’s my self-righteous self and my wickedly bad self, my flaky self and my bsentimental self. There are selfs I like and selfs I don’t like.there’s my little-girl selfnwhonlikes to play silly games and there’s my old-woman self when I’m quite sure I’m eighty and edging towards geriatric.The self I show in action at any moment depends on where I am, who I’m with, the circumstances of the situation and the mood I’m in.
Aidan Chambers
Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.
David Mitchell
If there’s no sacrifice, there’s no love.
Hanif Kureishi
Why don't you find out for yourself?Then you'll see the glass, hidden in the grass.
Morrissey
I don't believe outstandingly beautiful and charismatic women create obsession in what would otherwise be normal men, but rather they attract the weirdos and the stalkers; flames in the darkness that these disturbing people inhabit, unwittingly drawing them closer until they extinguish the very flame they were drawn to.
Rosamund Lupton
We live as One Man for contracting our infinite senses we behold multitude or expanding: we behold as one.
William Blake
It's over, Sam. Finally.""Yeah," he said. "I guess it is.""Turn out the light, Sam."Sam reached for the switch and turned out the light.
Michael Grant
You know the proverb, Mr. Hale, 'set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil' - well, some of these early manufacturers did ride to the devil in a magnificent style - crushing human bone and flesh beneath their horses' hoofs without remorse.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Her blonde tresses now lay unbound and flowing in comely waves down her back, like pale serpents against the blue sea of her costume.
Andrea Zuvich
How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?
Robert Galbraith
Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.
J.K. Rowling
CUSTOMER (to their friend): God, the Famous Five titles realy were crap, weren’t they? Five Go Camping. Five Go Off in a Caravan.... If it was Five Go Down To a Crack House it might be a bit more exciting.
Jen Campbell
The dwarfs can turn lead into gold...It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs.-Can we?-Damned if I know. I can't.-Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could.-Can you?-No!-Ah-ha!
Terry Pratchett
As he walked along, consciously enjoying the early coolness of the morning, he turned and looked behind him. People often do this and are usually surprised to find that there is some reason for turning around. Sometimes there is no apparent reason and they wonder why they did it. ("Ordeal By Water")
P.C. Wren
Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of the marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.
C.S. Lewis
The lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.
Stanley Kubrick
She inhabited a world from which I was excluded, and she had left me in an immense empty space.
Alfred Hayes
(I'm trying to improve my typing. notice I now leave a space after a comma, I'm very proud of myself!)
Nick Bantock
Words are clothes that thoughts wear
Samuel Butler
Weak hearts will be strengthened, and drooping saints will be revived as they listen to our "songs of deliverance." Their doubts and fears will be rebuked, as we teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.
Terry Pratchett
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.
Mick Jagger
There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder.
Karl Popper
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;Thus unlamented let me die;Steal from the world, and not a stoneTell where I lie.
Alexander Pope
Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic to girls and very harmful to their mental health. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that there seem to be some girls baling out and seeking to upgrade their status.
Sheila Jeffreys
After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name...
Diana Wynne Jones
Looking out of the window at the infinite sky, I prayed out, 'Dear Baby Jesus, I am sorry for my sin, even though I do not know what they are, which seems a bit unfair if it is going to be held against me. But that is your way. And I am not questioning your wisdomosity. In future, however, would it be possible for my life to be not so entirely crap? Thank you.
Louise Rennison
He thought he’d lived through everything. Only now did he realise he’d merely existed.
Dianna Hardy
She emerged from the shadows like an apparition, and he was taken aback by her beauty. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected to chance upon such a vision of loveliness in those harsh and unforgiving mountains. Her beautiful face, long black hair, and slender figure enchanted him.
Alan Kinross