Quotes by British Authors - Page 369

The Suitors Ball is fast approaching and it's a nasty reminder that my suitor will be chosen shortly. I feel sorry for the poor unfortunate guy, whichever one of them it happens to be.
Siobhan Davis
Trees're always a relief, after people.
David Mitchell
Of all the problems which will have to be faced in the future, in my opinion, the most difficult will be those concerning the treatment of the inferior races of mankind.
Leonard Darwin
Awareness is not an idea about awareness, as it is not thought at all. Awareness allows you to feel life as it's happening, as it is in perception that consciousness and all spiritual qualities are manifest.
Belsebuub
Like gratitude, authentic appreciation in the workplace is a realisation that can be nurtured and accessed with daily mindful practice. By and large, people who are grateful, happy and enthusiastic are going to demonstrate better performance than those who are unhappy and unappreciative. There is increasing evidence that a grateful mindset amplifies happiness and mental and emotional wellbeing.
Christopher Dines
How can you claim to have a passionate interest in something, and then make no effort to properly understand it?
Simon Cheshire
My storm is my own...Enter if you dare. However, bear in mind that the tempest of desire is fraught with unpredictability from the highest peaks to the depths of the abyss. Do not expect a smooth ride, but expect a true and passionate one...
Virginia Alison
Suppose the hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible things are true. We do not know that God is not as cruel as a Spanish inquisitor. Suppose, then, He is! If, after Death, we wicked ones were shovelled into a furnace of fire- we should have to burn. There would be no redress. It would simply be the Divine Order of things. It is outrageous that we should be so helpless and so dependent on any one- even God.
W.N.P. Barbellion
My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.
Tahir Shah
Twenty to life, she got, with time off for good behavior. You come around next spring. I'll introduce you.
Alfred Hitchcock
Saying of the ProphetPracticeWho are the learned? Those who put into practice what they know.
Idries Shah
Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.'Science,' he says vaguely.
Emma Thompson
My husband hands me my glass, full to the brim with green-gold wine and I stifle my resentment and attempt to smile at him. I mustn’t lose sight of what we have – two beautiful children; an amazing house that I never, in a million years, thought we’d be able to afford; Gill and Andy, my best friends – and this perfect day. I take a deep breath and feel my shoulders relax. I can smell the faintest trace of heather, drifting down from the moor.
Sanjida Kay
If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
George Orwell
Purchasing a large and expensive home during a real estate boom turned into the biggest financial mistake that I ever made.
Steven Magee
The intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is a vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness.
John Stuart Mill
So, wonder! I also wonder about you," said Cadfael mildly. "Do you know any human creatures who are not strangers, one to another?
Ellis Peters
The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Storytelling began as a way for humans to relay information, from where to find food sources to the benefits of familial bonding, because fictional stories were the easiest way to memorize and communicate a complete set of information. We remember information best when it is delivered in the form of a plot, which is called 'semantic memory.' Stories still serve a definitive purpose and the stronger the purpose, the clearer the story.Fire Up Your Writing Brain
Susan Reynolds
It is another unsolved mystery in a world full of unsolved mysteries.Now stand up and walk out the way you came, and the moment that fresh air caresses your face, you will realize that that is what makes the world so beautiful. All those unsolved mysteries. And you won't ever want to interfere with that beauty again.
Matt Haig
Not the intense momentIsolated, with no before and after,But a lifetime burning in every moment.
T.S Eliot
...you definitely are deep water Dr. Fisher. Fathoms deep.
J.M. Richards
But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it.
Iris Murdoch
Loki was trying to look serious, but even so, he was smiling at the corners of his mouth. It was not a reassuring smile.
Neil Gaiman
I’m still pretty sick about what I’ve lost, but I only admit it to myself late at night, which is probably why I’m not the best sleeper.
Nick Hornby
The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Mist lies over the river like the icy breath of winter angels. Darkness gathers round... and it is beautiful.Thank you for this life, this death, whatever it is you arethat makes us finally see.
Jay Woodman
The vastest things are those we may not learn.We are not taught to die, nor to be born,Nor how to burnWith love.How pitiful is our enforced returnTo those small things we are the masters of.
Mervyn Peake
Cultures produce myths because they satisfy a deep-rooted human need: the need to make sense of life. Myths are appealing because they reduce the complexity of experience, by making things seem simple and absolute; myths define popular realities which are accepted readily, even uncritically.
Matthew Screech
Tis always morning somewhere in the world.
Richard Hengest Horne
Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I'll feel right at home.
Charles Sheffield
Merlin's pants!" shrieked Hermione, jumping up and running from the room."Merlin's pants?" repeated Ron, looking amused. "She must be really upset.
J.K. Rowling
The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection and not a fountain to show them that we love them not when we feel like it but when they do.
Nan Fairbrother
The dead should not linger.
Sarwat Chadda
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
G.K. Chesterton
When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action is clear in mind when I start -- so I believe. But it is only when these imaginings are written down, passing it seems almost physically from my brain down the arm to my moving hand that they begin to live and move and have their being and assume a different kind of truth.
P.D. James
Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.
Helen Simonson
Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.
Charles Dickens
To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded toward her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go as expected.
Eva Ibbotson
The Eleven king looked sternly upon Thorin, when he was brought before him, and asked him many questions. But Thorin would only say that he was starving. "Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?" asked the king. "We did not attack them," answered Thorin, "we came to beg because we were starving." "Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?" "I don't know, but I expect that they're all starving in the forest." "What were you doing in the forest?" "Looking for food and drink, because we were starving." "And what brought you into the forest at all?" asked the king angrily. At that Thorin shut his mouth and would not say another word.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,What can I do to kill it and be free?
John Keats
Now that lilacs are in bloomShe has a bowl of lilacs in her roomAnd twists one in her fingers while she talks."Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not knowWhat life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (slowly twisting the lilac stalks)"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,And youth is cruel, and has no remorseAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see."I smile, of course,And go on drinking tea.
T.S Eliot
It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Harry, was surely the only way to travel — past swirls and turrets of snowy cloud, in a car full of hot, bright sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glove compartment...
J.K. Rowling
Severed and gone, so many years! And art thou still so dear to me, That throbbing heart and burning tears Can witness how I cling to thee?
Anne Brontë
You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
A.A. Milne
To a great extent in spiritual things we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone can bring us to see Jesus.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I never loved anyone else and never desired to. She was my companion, my lover, and my teacher.
Nick Bantock
The emotional, loving, moody child had small chance of developing into a happy woman. Had she as a girl been naturally joyus yet all that had befallen her must surely have driven away the bright birds, one by one, from her breast. As it was, made of more sombre clay, capable of deep happiness, but more easily drawn to the dark than the light, Fuchsia was even more open to the cruel winds of circumstance which appeared to have singled her out for particular punishment.
Mervyn Peake
A thankful and a contented spirit is a continual feast. We ought to be contented, and we shall be contented, if we are in the habit of seeing God in everything, and living upon Him day by day. Oh, for a spirit of true thankfulness!
Ashton Oxenden
You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you.
Caitlin Moran
You can viddy that everything in this wicked world counts. You can pony that one thing always leads to another. Right right right.
Anthony Burgess
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
J.I. Packer
Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for a time, and then moves on.
Idries Shah
There's nothing quite like the pleasure you get from plants and flower," he said to himself. "They certainly do cheer you up.
Charmian Hussey
This school is enough to make anyone a communist.
Jo Walton
After three years of English at Cambridge, being force-fed literary theory, I was almost convinced that literature was all coded messages about Marxism and the death of the self. I crawled out of the post-structuralist desert thirsty for heroines I could cry and laugh with. I was jaded. I craved trash.
Samantha Ellis
Energise your desires utilising your heart energy to create the things that you wish for in your life.
Steven Redhead
Feminism is not a dirty word. It does not mean you hate men, it does not mean you hate girls that have nice legs and a tan, and it does not mean you are a bitch or a dyke. It means you believe in equality.
Kate Nash
For my part, I am determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day.
Jane Austen
Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue', and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak — the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths" — and the policeman lowered his voice — "in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.
G.K. Chesterton