Quotes by British Authors - Page 351

One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin’s childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother’s beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents’ solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother.
Robert Galbraith
I glimpsed the man's face with the shine of death on it. They laid him down there in the open. They had brought him there to be close to his death, I understood this also at the same moment. For who would wish to see a companion gasp his last on a jolting cart? We desire to keep the dying and the newly dead close before our eyes so as to give them full meed of pity. Our Lord was brought down to be pitied, on the Cross He was too far away.
Barry Unsworth
He might be living on mice, but Chesterton does not look like an animal who is governed by his appetites. He's an ascetic, if Cathbad ever saw one.
Elly Griffiths
I looked into the literature on this," said Nightingale, "and it wasn't very helpful.""There's a literature about this?""You'd be amazed, Constable, about what there's a literature on.
Ben Aaronovitch
Time is a player. Time is part of today, not simply a measure of its passing.
Jeanette Winterson
If female liberation is to happen, if the reservoir of real female love is to be tapped, this sterile self-deception must be counteracted. The only literary form which could outsell romantic trash on the female market is hard-core pornography.
Germaine Greer
Faith is a bridge across the gulf of death.
Edward Young
But you see, Crumb, it is hard to give up what you have worked at since you were a boy. There were some Italian visitors once, they were cheering us on, Brandon and myself, and they thought that Achilles and Hector had come back to life. So they said.'But which is which? One dragged through the dust by the other ...The king says, 'You turn your boy out beautifully. No nobleman could do more.''I don't want him to be Achilles,' he says, 'I only want him not to be flattened.
Hilary Mantel
More faults are created than cured by professional teachers.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The past is as important as the future, but we only live in the here and now.
David Millar
That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.
Anita Brookner
Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which on hung one's dreams, who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum.
W Somerset Maugham
Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.
Aleister Crowley
He feels a second pang now for the existence of perfection, the stubborn existence of perfection in the most vulnerable of things and in the face of his refusal-logical-admirable refusal-to engage with this existence in his heart, in his mind. For the comfortless logic, the curse of clear sight, no matter which string he pulls on the same wretched knot: (a) the futility of seeing given the fatality in a place such as this where a mother still bloody must bury her newborn, hose off, and go home to pound yam into paste; (b) the persistence of beauty, in fragility of all places!, in a dewdrop at daybreak, a thing that will end, and in moments, and in a garden, and in Ghana, lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die.
Taiye Selasi
Our gifts are very pleasant to Him. He loves to see us lay our time, our talents, our substance on the altar not for the value of what we give, but for the sake of the motive from which the gift springs.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
...that when you wanted to see something very badly,sometimes you had to stay still,stay in the same place, remember how much you wanted to see it,and be patient.If you want to see hawks you have to be patient too.
Helen Macdonald
Public Utility Commission (PUC), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaints are rarely upheld. It is estimated that less than 5% of complaints are successful and that the actual number may be below 1% in some cases.
Steven Magee
I've never understood it,' continued Wilfred Carr, yawning. 'It's not in my line at all; I never had enough money for my own wants, let alone for two. Perhaps if I were as rich as you or Croesus I might regard it differently.'There was just sufficient meaning in the latter part of the remark for his cousin to forbear to reply to it. He continued to gaze out of the window and to smoke slowly.'Not being as rich as Croesus - or you,' resumed Carr, regarding him from beneath lowered lids, 'I paddle my own canoe down the stream of Time, and, tying it to my friends' doorposts, go in to eat their dinners.' ("The Well")
W.W. Jacobs
Yet all experience is an arch wherethroughGleams that untraveled world whose margin fadesForever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!As though to breathe were life!
Alfred Tennyson
A metamorphosis... The shining butterfly of the soul from the pupa of the body. Larva, pupa, imago. An image of art.
A.S. Byatt
If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.
Jane Austen
A funeral procession, the women scream until they fall down in a faint, the men hold them up, the boys cry silently sand swear to take up arms in their father's name. It is the same funeral procession that their fathers saw, their fathers before them, and their grandfathers unto generations unknown, where the same vow was taken.
Claire North
A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.
Tahir Shah
Sometimes the only reason why you won't let go of someone making you sad is because he was the only one that once made you happy.
Lily Amis
When both you and your spouse actively focus on developing godly character qualities, the foundation of your marriage will be twice as strong.
Elizabeth George
For I believe that part of knowledge is its desire to show itself and its refusal to put up with a merely hidden existence. I find mute knowledge dangerous, for it grows ever more mute and ultimately secret, and must then avenge itself for being secret.
Elias Canetti
Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of the most powerful sources of newness is the rebel or maverick, mind.
Max McKeown
All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God.
Aldous Huxley
Disappointment cannot exist without expectation. “The expected apricot is never as sweet when it reaches the mouth.
Idries Shah
Je me rends parfaitement compte du desagreable effet que produit sur la majorite de l'humanité, tout ce qui se rapporte, même au plus faible dègré, á des calculs ou raisonnements mathematiques.I am well aware of the disagreeable effect produced on the majority of humanity, by whatever relates, even at the slightest degree to calculations or mathematical reasonings.
Hiram Stevens Maxim
Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.
Gerald Brenan
But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.But it didn't seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.
Philip Pullman
When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. Once act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and fine we are... this.
Joe Abercrombie
Sometimes, I just wish.
Anthony T.Hincks
Handy Hint! When your friend talks about having 'a sweep', do not then visualise Dick van Dyke in his cheeky chappy chimney sweeper outfit heading up into her uterus to do a rendition of 'Step in Time'. Laughter is the inappropriate response to your friend's news.
Hadley Freeman
I've no interest in being thought provoking. Who needs more thoughts. I'd rather go down as one who is thought disposing.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame: and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.
Charles Dickens
You’re being deliberately cruel, now.” “No – I think deliberately cruel would be if I told you something rude, like: I’d love to see you stroking your stiff dick until you came all over yourself.” I pause again, but this time it’s not to eat his expression. This time I’m employing a bit of dramatic license, I think. “Or until you came all over me – because you know, you could do that if you wanted to. I could undo my nightie, and then you could just … spurt all over my tits.” He makes the following sound: “Hoh.
Charlotte Stein
Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
Jane Austen
The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate.
Bertrand Russell
Time spent in one place deepens this interaction, creating a melding and meshing that can feel a bit like love. In the drowsy light of the coming evening I not only see where I've walked before, but who I was when I walked there. What I was feeling; what I was thinking. And isn't this how we navigate this sphere? Creating fusions of human and place, attaching meaning and emotions, drawing cognitive maps that make scenes of the realm beyond our comprehension? Our connection to the world is always two things at once: instinctive and augmented.
Rob Cowen
Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt cuff was pulled back by his position and displayed his slim, strong wrist and the lower part of his brown arm lightly covered with fine hairs. The sun shone goldly upon them. Something in Isabel's immobility attracted my attention, and I glanced at her. She was so still that you might have thought her hypnotized. Her breath was hurried. Her eyes were fixed on the sinewy wrist with its little golden hairs and on that long, delicate, but powerful hand, and I have never seen on a human countenance such a hungry concupiscence as I saw then on hers. It was a mask of lust. I would never have believed that her beautiful features could assume an expression of such unbridled sensuality. It was animal rather than human. The beauty was stripped from her face; the look upon it made her hideous and frightening. It horribly suggested the bitch in heat and I felt rather sick.
W Somerset Maugham
We have sought for firm ground and found none. The deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance.
Max Born
Consciousness is who we really are; thoughts, feelings, and emotions are passing and temporary, but consciousness is existence.
Belsebuub
Life is whatever you make it, a heaven or hell on earth.
Steven Redhead
Minds like bodies will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
Charles Dickens
According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scars than almost anything else.
J.K. Rowling
Always trust in proven survivors.
Peter F. Hamilton
Say it. But...""But what?" he asked.She whispered it, sounding too vulnerable. "But only if its the truth, Caine. Only. If.""I love you," he said.
Michael Grant
No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Charles Caleb Colton
One twig at a time. Like a bird making a nest.
Carol Lovekin
They're a pair of young Satans.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I commend my soul to any god that can find it.
Terry Pratchett
But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release.
David Harvey
Where the human need for order meetsthe human tendency to mayhem, where civilization runs smack against its discontents, you find friction, and a great deal of general wear and tear.
Ian McEwan
Finally, his whole body burst into flames and as the pain became unbearable, he threw his arms in the air and screamed in agony. In his final moments, the words of the Nazarene echoed through his mind: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Alan Kinross
But this isn't a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she'd be a person.
David Mitchell
Being interesting isn't important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you're proud of
Holly Bourne
Oh! I know what I wanted to tell you – you’ll never guess who Thomas is chasing after now…”Hmmm, never guess or can’t be bothered to guess – it was a hard call. I yawned again, glancing at the bed, which was inviting me to clamber back inside and pull the sheet over my head. So tempting, but not practical.
Melanie Cusick-Jones
But I want you,” he smiles at me. “Not just to make me a king. I’ve always wanted you. Despite it all, you are still the bride I would choose. I do choose you.
Melinda Salisbury