Quotes by British Authors - Page 381

The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Christopher Hitchens
Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.
Jeanette Winterson
Such is life, marked by the ticking of the clock and the call of the alarm until the day it all falls into perpetual silence. For most of us, certainly for this boy, life is not composed of great deeds, but of small actions, and that’s okay. It’s the best I can give and I like it this way.
Gillibran Brown
It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I have read more about Oprah Winfrey’s ass than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because its women aren’t spending all their time reading about Oprah Winfrey’s ass.
Caitlin Moran
I want to be with YOU!"Bex to Tea
Jamie Scallion
[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
C.S. Lewis
Whether your pleasing or pissing everybody off, your doing something wrong.
David Cook
Mr. Beeblebrox, sir,' said the insect in awed wonder, 'you’re so weird you should be in movies.;'Yeah,' said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing, 'and you, baby, should be in real life.' The insect paused for a moment
Douglas Adams
Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.
Richard Branson
The current best estimate for the Earth’s weight is 5.9725 billion trillion tonnes, a difference of only about 1 per cent from Cavendish’s finding.
Bill Bryson
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten and to leave off fighting at once.
Samuel Butler
We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--- it's not useful--- to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.
Julian Barnes
We are bound by the secrets we share.
Zoë Heller
Why do we tell lies? We lie because the truth is too painful or too shameful for us to face, or because the truth is simply inconvenient and has to be suppressed before it’s allowed to disturb us. We invent lies because, for whatever reason, we want to invent reality. And the false reality which we invent, the world we make up by our lying, has one great advantage for us: It makes no claim on us. It demands nothing. It doesn’t shape us in the way that truth shapes us; it faces us with no obligations; it has no hard, resistant surfaces which we can’t get through. A lie is a made-up reality, and so never unsettles, never criticizes, never resists, never overthrows us. It’s the world, not as it is, but as we wish it to be: a world organized around us and our desires, the perfect environment in which we can be left at peace to be ourselves and to follow our own good or evil purposes.
John Webster
There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
John le Carré
A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.
Tahir Shah
Oh well... I'd just been thinking, if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet.
J.K. Rowling
In Hell... bad is good... and I am second only to the Devil.
Felicity Heaton
The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Stories are how we connect. Evolution isn’t seriously about thumbs but about how we use language – that’s what raises us above dumb animals, right? Language?
Richard House
And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.
Joseph Conrad
Avoid working in windowless environments for good health.
Steven Magee
Oh, traccy traccy ply ply bracket doints and divs
Yahtzee Croshaw
The word "landmark" is from the old English "landmearc", meaning 'an object in the landscape which, by its conspicuousness, serves as a guide in the direction of one's course.
Robert Macfarlane
Wisdom is the God-given ability to see life with rare objectivity and to handle life with rare stability.
Elizabeth George
Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things our own meditation must form our judgement.
Isaac Watts
It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
Charles Dickens
I wondered then if there could ever be trust in a relationship based from the outset upon deceiving other people.
Catherine Sanderson
Is it ok to sometimes be shy?Yes, of course. The point is,that being that way all the time and using it as an excuse to never be the opposite of shy,it's not good. It's not good for your life, your interactions,strenght of character and how diverse and interesting you can be. You are MORE than shy. Don't be labeled, be what you wanna be in any given moment. And DO what WORKS, not what you think you are.
Matthew Hussey
Another interview, some more personal philosophy shared with the people of Japan:“You are in favour with women,” he is told. “Do you have any secret to be sexy?”“Yeah”, he answers. “Get famous and rich. Yeah, If you’re famous and rich, you become better-looking instantly. In fact, I’m quite an average guy but it’s what people think I’ve got that makes me sexy, it’s not what I actually have.”<…>“It’s 50 percent of what you’ve got and 50 percent of what people think you’ve got that makes you sexy… Yeah, I’m rich. That makes me sexy. Sexy’s in the eye of the beholder. I don’t fancy me much. They’ve got the perception that I’m a bit of a wild one, and I think people like to think they can tame you.
Chris Heath
But it only takes a doubt. A drop of ink falls into a clear glass of water and clouds the whole thing. So the moment after I realised I wasn't perfectly well was the moment I realised I was still very ill indeed.
Matt Haig
The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.
Martin Amis
Ryan, if you abandon me here, I will have no choice but to tell your father,” Navinka cut in. “You don’t want Aronzo and his men prowling after you again.” She gave a stretch. “I can inform Lord Glenford we are joining my father in Dragonvale. The East Pass is a safe route. He will not insist on sending a further escort.” She flashed a deadly smile. “I can make your life easier or more difficult. I leave the choice to you.
Sam Dogra
The light on her face was a lesson, a book that she hoped he would want to read, but he looked away from her...she did not want this man to leave her alone. He was kind. And she feared the loneliness of dreaming
Caryl Phillips
...You haven't I suppose ever mixed with politicians at close quarters. They're awful...their stupidity is inhuman.
Robert Skidelsky
No practice exists in isolation.
Idries Shah
When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand- she's as good as any other; they'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.
Thomas Hardy
...Do you need a hug?” Payton asked with a smile. Ryann chuckled as Payton walked around the kitchen cabinet and held open her arms. “Come on in.” Ryann wrapped her arms around Payton’s waist and set her chin on her shoulder. “I made that stupid Silent of the Lambs threat again, and she corrected me. That made me furious.” Payton snorted with laughter as she wrapped her arms snugly around her. “Did you ever see the movie?” “No, I don’t like serial killer flicks. Shelly told me about it.” “I didn’t think so. The killer didn’t make meat suits, he took their skin. So when you want to sound really vicious, you say something like… ‘I’ll skin you and wear one of your ass cheeks like a beanie.’” “That’s really gross,” Ryann said as she continued to hold on. “But I suppose ‘I’ll snap you like a broomstick’ doesn’t have the same effect.
Robin Alexander
Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I'm not a good man. Perhaps morally I'm younger even than you are. Can you understand that?
John Fowles
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing. It is like saying that because a man can only walk about on two legs, therefore he never walks about except to buy shoes and stockings.
G.K. Chesterton
The pleasant fact is that the British are not much good at violent crime except in fiction, which is of course as it should be.
Bill Bryson
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
Aldous Huxley
...people change, even good people, if they get the wrong thing in their head. And not everything is always what it looks like and sometimes just because one person looks weak, they might be very strong, and another person might look like a spooky freak but he might be one of the kindest people you'd ever meet. And I guess I learned that time is slippery...We have to enjoy every second, love with all our hearts, all we can, while we can.
Lee Thompson
It is quite possible that, even if you set the most relevant, realistic goals, you may not achieve them in the way or the time you wanted to. Life may throw something unexpected in your path, which stops you from achieving what you want, when you want. This is not failure. Feeling like you have failed is bound to lead to low mood, and can often come about if things haven't quite gone according to plan. However, the best thing to do is to draw a mental line under the experience, learn from what has happened and try again. As long as you are still trying, you are working towards your long-term aims; and as long as you are doing that, you are never truly failing.
Anna Barnes
How many hopes and dreams are trapped within these bones? How many wonders lie never to be discovered? This is what war is. Desolation, despair and loss. There are no victors.
David Gemmell
Every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.
Aldous Huxley
Eccolo!” he exclaimed.At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.“Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.”She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone.George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her…
E.M. Forster
It sounded like walls tumbling, liberty bells chiming, government buildings being stormed.It sounded like a revolution.It sounded like hope.
Alex Scarrow
I think you're a shit,’ said Keith sharply. ‘I think much of what you’ve done this season is shit and I think what you've put everyone involved with this club through is shit. How’s that?
Dougie Brimson
Generalities are intellectually necessary evils.
Aldous Huxley
Well, you have now, Sam, dear Sam,’ said Frodo, and he lay back in Sam’s gentle arms, closing his eyes, like a child at rest when night-fears are driven away by some loved voice or hand. Sam felt that he could sit like that in endless happiness...
J.R.R. Tolkien
I woke to find the sun streaming through the bedroom window. Looking up with one eye opened and the other still closed, I saw that Luca was awake, lying on one side and looking down on me. “Good morning. Do you want to talk Adriana?”“No, I just want to fuck. Oh, good morning by the way.”“For a prospective sub you are becoming a little demanding.”“Sorry, am I not supposed to want sex?”“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you wanting sex, in fact it is a condition of you being here in bed with me. It’s just that a good little sub waits to be asked.”“Sorry. Then of course I will withdraw that demand and lie here to await your pleasure.”“Good, a fast learner, that’s what I like.
Rachel de Vine
The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.
Walter Savage Landor
When we are angry, when we are excited, when we are depressed, when we are elated, we are completely submerged in and identified with those thoughts and feelings. This is why we suffer. We suffer because we are completely identified with our thoughts and feelings and we think this is me. This is who I am.
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.
C.S. Lewis
Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.
Terry Pratchett
I am still not used to being the possessor of such a grand title. I believe I shall have to start wearing a purple satin turban and carrying a lorgnette.
Mary Balogh
I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you.
C.S. Lewis
but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.
Jane Austen