Quotes by British Authors - Page 383

But you can't argue that the world isn't in an unhealthy moral state.""Wouldn't think of it dearest. People lie, cheat, rape, swindle, kill, maim, torture and destroy. Bad thing. People also pop into bed together and cosy up. Good thing. If we think fucking is a sign of moral decay then we're a little bit stupid-stupid, aren't we?
Stephen Fry
Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Farquhar Tupper
Civilization is a movement - not a condition a voyage - not a harbour.
Arnold Toynbee
That sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.
Jane Austen
Do not dismiss the words of the old; they possess wisdom, which comes only with age, and often speak of things that the young are too immature to understand.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Why have the English remained to English? Throughout India's history conquerors have come from elsewhere, and all of them --- Turk, Arab, Hun, Mongol, Persian --- have become Indian. If --- when ---this Pakistan happens, those Muslims who leave Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad to go there, They will be leaving their homes. But when the English leave, they'll be going home.
Kamila Shamsie
Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.
John Lennon
Men are willing to keep their evil characters if they can but get rid fo their evil reputations. They are scrupulously studious of appearances.
F.W. Boreham
Then sudden Felagund there swayingSang in answer a song of staying,Resisting, battling against power,Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;Of changing and of shifting shape,Of snares eluded, broken traps,The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
J.R.R. Tolkien
And who cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather dangerous, senseless attribute, akin to weakness, perhaps partaking of frenzy - a disease rather than a gift of the mind?Probably all think it so but those who possess, or fancy they possess it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would be dim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonely if this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not feel. All illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, and would not give it for gold.
Charlotte Brontë
But if everything's already decided, then what's the point of living? - Tom, pg 437
Joseph Delaney
Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.
Thomas Hardy
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins
I think that 'God' would have a devil of a time if he was here on Earth.
Anthony T.Hincks
But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.
J.R.R. Tolkien
There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.
Terry Pratchett
It's all about control.
Anthony T.Hincks
Oh, let us love our occupations,Bless the squire and his relations,Live upon our daily rations,And always know our proper stations.
Charles Dickens
Be the master of your personal internal universe.
Steven Redhead
Fly high... Where the only chill that cuts through you is the wind. Where your heart pounds from exhilaration not disappointment and after ascending through cloudy wisps, brushing your wings, there is only the clear blue horizon beckoning you forth....
Virginia Alison
His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.
John Charles Pollock
Welcome as the flowers in May.
Walter Scott
You won't," says the Mayor, smiling again. "Everyone knows you aren't a killer, Todd."He pushes Viola forward again -She calls out from the pain of it -Viola, I think - -I grit my teeth and raise the rifle -I cock it -And I say what's true -"I would kill to save her," I say.
Patrick Ness
Fare well we call to hearth and hallThough wind may blow and rain may fallWe must away ere break of dayOver the wood and mountain tallTo Rivendell where Elves yet dwellIn glades beneath the misty fellThrough moor and waste we ride in hasteAnd wither then we cannot tellWith foes ahead behind us dreadBeneath the sky shall be our bedUntil at last our toil be spedOur journey done, our errand spedWe must away! We must away!We ride before the break of day!
J.R.R. Tolkien
It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of earthquakes should one day throw light on the origin of mountains, as it must to the first astronomers, that the fall of an apple should assist in explaining the motions of the moon.
Charles Lyell
Unless you have great parents or some inspirational teacher from a movie that pushes you to follow your dreams, you can't expect a kid to be smart enough to realize they can do what they want with their life before they've been pushed through the school system into having an average life.
Dan Howell
I keep six honest serving men. (They taught me all I know) Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
Rudyard Kipling
Because that's what Hermione does,' said Ron, shrugging. 'When in doubt, go to the library.
J.K. Rowling
Most Christians expect little from God ask little and therefore receive little and are content with little.
A. W. Pink
No human being can really understand another and no one can arrange another's happiness.
Graham Greene
Let my worship be within the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
Doreen Valiente
Death whispers your name to me.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Memory's got nothing to do with years. You remember what you remember.
Ian McEwan
Dreams come from that special place in our mind where our soul loves to spend its holidays.
Anthony T.Hincks
As her body expanded so did her interior landscape. She imagined minarets, skyscrapers, entire cities being constructed inside her. Thighs thickened, belly became basketball-sized, buttocks deepened with dimples. Even her taste-buds shifted, and she held her tongue out for crushed ice, chalk, charcoal.
Diriye Osman
One of the highlights of the first Good Omens tour was Neil and I walking through New York singing Shoehorn with Teeth. Well, we'd had a good breakfast. And you don't get mugged, either.
Terry Pratchett
A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree if you agree with him he is a statesman.
David Lloyd George
For several years he hadn't moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most of his time inside his own head in any case. There's a certain type of person it's very hard to imprison.
Terry Pratchett
Yo Mama’s so poor, when I lit her house on fire, the cockroaches came out singing, “Clap your hands, stomp your feet, praise the Lord, we got some heat!
Oliver Oliver Reed
It was as if the city itself was preparing for some impending catastrophe. There had always been talks of ghost and darkness here, even in his boyhood, and now that darkness seems to be seeping from the stones and timbers as much as it was descending from heavens.
K.J. Wignall
We fucked a flame into being.
D.H. Lawrence
It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized you could buy a packet of cereal with a free gift and then just stick your hand in and root around in the packet until you found the free thing. It seems a much simpler way. But that took me about fifteen years to work out.
Eddie Izzard
We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.
Arthur Conan Doyle
One of the cleverest and most insidious twists in the whole sorry tale is the way women are double bound by a gender-biased definition of professionalism and the threat of being labeled "whining.
Laura Bates
Treece quite seriously divided the world into writers, who led life as a conscious effort, and people, and people who didn't; sometimes he preferred writers and sometimes he preferred people.
Malcolm Bradbury
It's true I live on hope. Why shouldn't I? Every day I see her beauty while you rot in hell. You will tell me that I'm deluded but we are all deluded in some way. The question is which is the best delusion.
Danny Scheinmann
Always think in circles to get your ideas around
Benny Bellamacina
Let us not take offence over small cheese, let things slide off when they don’t really matter, not take things personally, be free to make better use of our energy, to get on with something meaningful instead.
Jay Woodman
It is no use blaming the men-we made them what they are-and now it is up to us to try and make ourselves-the makers of men-a little more responsible.
Nancy Astor
Stand in nature before anyone else has woken and most people find something to believe in.
Tor Udall
Did I do and say these things? Yes, I did. Are there any mitigating circumstances? Not really, unless any circumstances {in other words, context) can be regarded as mitigating. And before you judge, although you have probably already done so, go away and write down the four worst things you have done to a partner, even if - especially if - your partner doesn't know about them. Don't dress things up, or try to explain them; just write them down, in a list, in the plainest language possible. Finished? Ok, so who's the arsehole now?
Nick Hornby
he began to feel that she was very lonely indeed. “If he’d been here,” she said, “those cowards would never have dared to insult me.” She thought about “him” with great sadness and perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant kindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good humour; his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried, for she was particularly lively, and had put on a little extra rouge, when she came down to dinner.
William Makepeace Thackeray
You have to go for it. For the rest of us.
Cathy Hopkins
I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.
Charles Dickens
It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back.
Joe Abercrombie
I owed the greater apology, but at the same time I knew that was done was done, that no matter what I said now I would never be able to make it right.
Jhumpa Lahiri
How could you die and not be old enough to hear about premarital sex? How could you die and still not be allowed to fall in love or be honest? Surely not everything had to wait for university and a good job. Passion and truth had to trump even those things.
Zen Cho
A mind filled with negative thoughts makes you feel miserable and inadequate and will lead to failure after failure no matter how hard you try to succeed.
Steve Backley
The poor are very well off, at least the agricultural poor, very well off indeed. Their incomes are certain, that is a great point, and they have no cares, no anxieties; they always have a resource, they always have the House. People without cares do not require as much food as those whose life entails anxieties. See how long they live!
Benjamin Disraeli
No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.
Helen Fielding