Quotes by British Authors - Page 367

Too many economists excuse their practical failure by saying "the politicians (or bureaucrats) didn't do exactly what I recommended." Just as medical practitioners must allow for the fact that their patients may not take all the pills they prescribe, or follow all the advice they are given, so economics practitioners need to foresee political and administrative pressures and make their plans robust to changes that politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyists are likely to impose.
Paul Klemperer
I know what it's like to have a power no other cat understands. It's the loneliest feeling in the world.
Erin Hunter
Kara knew all he recognized was T and A on a string and he was nothing more than a sleazy puppeeter , so long as there were souls for sale he was ready to buy ..
Saira Viola
Surprised by joy- impatient as the WindI turned to share the transport-- Oh! with whomBut thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,That spot which no vicissitude can find?Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--But how could I forget thee? Through what power,Even for the least division of an hour,Have I been so beguiled as to be blindTo my most grievous loss? -- That thought's returnWas the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;That neither present time, nor years unbornCould to my sight that heavenly face restore.
William Wordsworth
Sergeant Pietro Oliva was a good Catholic. He liked to go into a church and cross himself, genuflect to the alter, and then settle down to a little prayer and contemplation, savouring the coolness, the heavy odours, the darkness, and the sensation of being soaked in the atmosphere of centuries’ worth of devotion that hung in the tenebrous and golden air of churches.
Louis de Bernières
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.
John Stuart Mill
No question, no problem, no concern, is too big or too small for God to handle!
Elizabeth George
When people speak, listen carefully and pay particular attention to what they are not saying.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Ignorance breeds fear. Tell people the truth. Trust them to keep their heads.
Olivia Manning
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together and to rest in her bosom.
Charles Dickens
Everything that seemingly happens externally is occurring in order to trigger something within us, to expand us and take us back to who we truly are.
Anita Moorjani
Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do
John R.W. Stott
The weak makes excuses, the strong makes changes.
Habeeb Akande
...Something we once loved, and love now, in the shape of a book. Maybe eBooks are going to take over, one day, but not until those whizzkids in Silicon Valley invent a way to bend the corners, fold the spine, yellow the pages, add a coffee ring or two and allow the plastic tablet to fall open at a favorite page.
Russell T. Davies
Afterwards, I will have to tie the trees to bamboo poles so the wind will not determine their shape. A tree cannot be given form by the vagaries of the wind.
Deborah Levy
...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.
N.T. Wright
If you didn't do anything that wasn't good for you it would be a very dull life. What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous. Have you noticed that? I'd like to find the bastard that thought that one up.
Lemmy Kilmister
The story of life is to get out of this life what you came for.
Steven Redhead
Nowists get off on getting on, so they run when they could walk, jump when they could sit and dance when they could sit at the edge. They regret inaction, so simply act.
Max McKeown
we are finite, in that we are a product and source of the infinite.
Ilyas Kassam
Some of the epidemic may overwhelm society as a physical expression of energy hysteria.
Lynne McTaggart
The global population of Earth are involved in the following corporate government experiments: The long term effects of - 1. Nuclear bomb fallout radiation. 2. Man-made wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation. 3. Exposure to man-made electricity. 4. Eclipsing of the Sun by the International Space Station (ISS), satellites, airplanes and jet aircraft contrails (chemtrails). 5. Eating food forced grown using a variety of toxic industrial chemicals. 6. Adding massive amounts of pollution to the atmosphere and water bodies. 7. Living in metal structures. 8. Exposure to abnormally high solar radiation levels. 9. Relocating to areas that the human has no genetic adaptation to. 10. An indoor lifestyle.
Steven Magee
You don’t know anything about me.”“No, I know not everything about you. But I sense enough to know you have mistaken obsession with drive, guilt with injustice. I know you want to escape what you are, cabbage fairy,” he said, reaching for his hood and gloves and tucking them into the waistband of his trousers. “Your desires are no different from my own, I simply have the courage to face them.
F.D. Lee
The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. IT is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is he who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.
C.S. Lewis
What the fissure through which one sees disaster? The circle is unbroken; the harmony complete. Here is the central rhythm; here the common mainspring. I watch it expand, contract; and then expand again. Yet I am not included.
Virginia Woolf
It was important to tell people. To let people know that this can happen. Your child's body can stop. Stop breathing, stop beating.
Sarah Moss
No matter the disappointment, you simply cannot divorce your favorite team.
Kevin Walker
Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city - a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever.
Kenneth Grahame
I want to make love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.
Warsan Shire
It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.
Ian McEwan
The whole conception of 'sin' is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature.
Bertrand Russell
Christmas is about community, collaboration, celebration. Done right, Christmas can be an antidote to the Me First mentality that has rebranded capitalism as neo-liberalism. The shopping mall isn't our true home, nor is it a public space, though, as libraries, parks, playgrounds, museums and sports facilities disappear, for many the fake friendliness of the mall is the only public space left, apart from the streets
Jeanette Winterson
The clouds of night opened like ink blossoming in water.
Christopher Fowler
What does it matter what people do? At the end of the day we're all dead.
Kate Atkinson
I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
C.S. Lewis
Now it's the dark's turn to be afraid.
Joseph Delaney
Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge.
Idries Shah
Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last.
Olivia Laing
Music is the real life. Everything else is just mortar.
Fox Benwell
The burning point of paper was the moment where I knew that I would have to remember this. Because people would have to remember books, if other people burn them or forget them. We will commit them to memory. We will be come them. We become authors. We become their books.
Neil Gaiman
Poverty is no sin.
George Edward Herbert
The counsellor who never reads a novel or never opens a book of poetry is neglecting an important resource for empathic development.
Dave Mearns
Duke to Michel: I’m fairly certain that even ifyou’d struggle in a quiz against a pigeon, you are capable enough of opening doors.
Elias Zapple
The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS.
Winston S. Churchill
I wonder who had the first computer dream, where, and when? I wonder if computers ever dream of humans.
David Mitchell
Slowly the lights of the torches in front of Merry flicked and went out, and he was walking in a darkness; and he thought: ‘This is a tunnel leading to a tomb; there we shall stay forever.’ But suddenly into his dream there fell a living voice. ‘Well, Merry! Thank goodness I have found you!’ He looked up and the mist before his eyes cleared a little. There was Pippin! They were face to face in a narrow lane, but for themselves it was empty. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Where is the king?’ He said. ‘And Eowyn?’ Then he stumbled and sat down on a doorstep and began to weep again. ‘They must have gone up into the Citadel,’ said Pippin. ‘I think you must have fallen asleep on your feet and taken the wrong turning. When we found out you were not with them, Gandalf sent me to look for you. Poor old Merry! How glad I am to see you again! But you are worn out, and I won’t bother you with any talk. But tell me, are you hurt, or wounded?’ ‘No,’ said Merry. ‘Well, no, I don’t think so. But I can’t use my right arm, Pippin, not since I stabbed him. And my sword burned away like a piece of wood.’ Pippin’s face was anxious. ‘Well, you had better come with me as quick as you can,’ he said. ‘I wish I could carry you. You aren’t fit to walk any further. They shouldn’t have let you walk at all; but you must forgive them. So many dreadful things have happened in the City, Merry, that one poor hobbit coming in from battle is easily overlooked.’ ‘It’s not always a misfortune being overlooked,’ said Merry. ‘I was overlooked just now by—no, no, I can’t speak of it. Help me, Pippin! It’s all going dark again, and my arm is so cold.’ ‘Lean on me, Merry lad!” said Pippin. ‘Come now. Foot by foot. It’s not far.’ ‘Are you going to bury me?’ said Merry. ‘No, indeed!’ said Pippin, trying to sound cheerful, though his heart was wrung with fear and pity. ‘No, we are going to the Houses of Healing.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Let me tell you something: when you dance, you are the greatest dancer who has ever lived. And when you sing, you will have the courage to raise your voice to the heavens, knowing that you may never get an answer.
Emma Forrest
What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed?" said Black, with a terrible fury in his face. "Only innocent lives, Peter!""You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!""THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!
J.K. Rowling
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
Philip Larkin
I just take the train from platform nine and three-quarters," - Harry Potter
J.K. Rowling
Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong...But it might.
Terry Pratchett
This place has been my home. They liked me here. Not any more. Now they will look the other way. Now I don't belong.
David Millar
[Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower] 'No other contemporary officer approached his accumulated experience...' From Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower 1742-1814.
Ian M Bates
It might have been a new way for her heart to beat.
Philip Pullman
We live in the irradiated lazy indoor cancer society.
Steven Magee
Nations have passed away and left no traces And history gives the naked cause of it - One single simple reason in all cases They fell because their peoples were not fit.
Rudyard Kipling
My dear Mr FitzGeorge!' cried Lady Slane. 'You really mustn't talk as though my life had been a tragedy. I had everything that most women would covet: position, comfort, children, and a husband I loved. I had nothing to complain of - nothing.''Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered. Nothing matters to an artist except the fulfilment of his gift. You know that as well as I do. Frustrated, he grows crooked like a tree twisted into an unnatural shape. All meaning goes out of life, and life becomes existence - a makeshift. Face it, Lady Slane. Your children, your husband, your splendour, were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. They were what you chose to substitute for your real vocation. You were too young, I suppose, to know any better, but when you chose that life you sinned against the light.
Vita Sackville-West
With faint praises one another damn.
William Wycherley
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
George Orwell
Anyone who has ever watched children amuse themselves will recognize that the scientific and technological face of civilization is precisely the result of play in its purest form. Just as children are constantly exploring, experimenting, testing and trying things out, for no conscious purpose except the sheer enjoyment of the game itself, so pure science and applied technology play with ideas and toy with the principles and substance of the world; all the time wondering ‘just suppose…’ and asking ‘what happens if…?
Paul Kriwaczek