Quotes by British Authors - Page 387

If I have to face the end of human existence, I want to look totally smoking when it happens. Now shut the hell up.
Angeline Trevena
We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail....'No, you won't.'We will,' stated the robot simply.No, you won't. It makes my ship work.'In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail....'You will not,' said Zaphod.And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.'Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?'No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.'Oh, yeah?' said Zaphod, waggling his gun.Yes,' said the robot, and they shot him.Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down. (85-86)
Douglas Adams
The erotic drive is the great energy that moves through all evolution.What about love? Where does that fit in?Love's simply the handmaiden of the great energy, and an excuse to write suspect poetry.
Peter Milligan
HopeSmiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...
Alfred Tennyson
Who killed Christianity in Europe? Was it, as (Max) Weber himself predicted, that the spirit of capitalism was bound to destroy the Protestant ethic parents, as materialism corrupted the original aestheticism of the godly?
Niall Ferguson
Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: his will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death.
J.K. Rowling
Society can only hurt if you care for its opinion
Jude Morgan
To always be intending to live a new life but never to find time to set about it this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another till he is starved and destroyed.
John Tillotson
Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief.
Martin Amis
My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch.
Jhumpa Lahiri
First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.
Horatio Nelson
Is it possible that we ‘hate’ politics because we have forgotten its specific and limited nature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it be that our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destined to disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make ‘every sad heart glad’, as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not always getting what you want, an awareness that public governance is often slow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard to understand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterested behaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptance that some people will always take out more from the system than they put in—these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy.
Matthew Flinders
Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.
Ellis Peters
All story fiction is both truth that happens and never happens. Fiction is always about humanity, even if no subject is humanitarian or even human.
Richard Bunning
Take my books away, and I should be desperate!
Emily Brontë
Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.
Aiden Shaw
We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. It's all tied in with the desire to blame others for misfortunes and to get some form of compensation into the bargain.
Alexander McCall Smith
Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewelry into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting than the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic.
Terry Pratchett
Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
Alan W. Watts
I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.
Charlotte Brontë
Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.
Lee Child
They had lived and known glory, and then they were ddead. She was alive and they were not, and nothing but a heartbeat separated her from them
Rosie Thomas
You have a dress with a décolletage to emphasise your breasts. I suppose the cleavage is the proper focus but what I wanted to do was to fasten my index finger and thumb at the bolts of your collar bone, push out, spreading the web of my hand until it caught against your throat. You asked me if I wanted to strangle you. No, I wanted to fit you, not just in the obvious ways but in so many indentations.
Jeanette Winterson
I have the perfect simplified tax form for government. Why don't they just print our money with a return address on it?
Bob Hope
I blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy, spotty fifteen-year-old. And because it's rarer, it sends the blusher tumbling back to that time when life felt like nothing more than one long sequence of embarrassments.
Julian Barnes
It was in the attempt to ascertain the interrelationships between species that experiments n genetics were first made. The words "evolution" and "origin of species" are now so intimately associated with the name of Darwin that we are apt to forger that the idea of common descent had been prominent in the mnds of naturalists before he wrote, and that, for more than half a century, zealous investigators had been devoting themselves to the experimental study of that possibility. Prominent among this group of experimenters may be mentioned Koelreauter, John Hunter, Herbert Knight, Gartner, Jordan. Naudin, Godron, Lecoq, Wichura--men whose names are familiar to every reader of Animals and Plants unders Domestication.
William Bateson
Is he weeping?" said the one with the softest heart.
Mary Renault
The mysterious is always attractive. People will always follow a vail.
Bede Jarrett
If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; thatwitches are often betrayed by their appetites;dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;hearts can be well-hidden,and you betray them with your tongue.Do not be jealous of your sister.Know that diamonds and rosesare as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs:colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.Remember your name.Do not lose hope -- what you seek will be found.Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn.Trust dreams.Trust your heart, and trust your story.When you come back, return the way you came.Favors will be returned, debts be repaid.Do not forget your manners.Do not look back.Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand.When you reach the little house, the place your journey started,you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.And then go home. Or make a home.Or rest.
Neil Gaiman
Words to invoke peace & awareness. Words to create freedom and fairness. Words to plant sacred seeds. and sing us back into balance.
Jay Woodman
The classes that wash most are those that work least.
G.K. Chesterton
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
Alain de Botton
I have good reason to be content,for thank God I can read andperhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
John Keats
What a tricky and uncomfortable thing is conscience, that nearly always begins to trouble us at the moment of, or after, the event, not before, when it might be of some use.
H. Rider Haggard
It is not rubbish! It is the part of people that you do not understand.
E.M. Forster
What had these people done to deserve a band of desperate rebels turning up on their doorsteps, and now more trouble! Yet, what had any of them done, what gods had they displeased to deserve the calamity that was the Romans?
Margaret McGoverne
Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.
H. Rider Haggard
It's tougher to look than to leap.
Hugh Cornwell
...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.
P.G. Wodehouse
A virtue to be serviceable must like gold be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
Samuel Butler
Now that I have found thee, I know that in the first step I took, I moved away from thee.
Idries Shah
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.
Neil Gaiman
But I’ve kept first of March as my birthday as I like to tease Zed about dating an older woman. And my parents wouldn’t understand if I told them about the soulfinder bond and tried to change it.”“They don’t know?”“Well, I think they’ve picked up that there’s something special between Zed and me but I’m not sure how I’d even start to explain to non-savants. I was exactly overjoyed when Zed filled me in about it all the first time.”“What did you do?”“Thumped him with a shopping bag and told him he was a jerk.”“Ouch.
Joss Stirling
My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics. Because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe. And in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction.
Stephen Hawking
For the cause that lacks assistance The wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance And the good that I can do.
George Linnaeus Banks
Everything is determined by your interpretation of what happens. You can change the meaning of what happens through your perception of events or memories.
Steven Redhead
The end must justify the means.
Matthew Prior
Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.
John Wilmot
I’ve tried everything else, I’ll try God.“- Cherie.
Paul Alkazraji
Never give a sucker an even break, but don't cheat a friend.
Cary Grant Mr. Lucky
We don't need magic to change the world.
J.K. Rowling
It occurred to him that strength was quite different from toughness and that being vulnerable wasn't quite the same as being weak.
Michelle Magorian
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
Lord Acton
In the street below, a posh-looking drunk man is reading the card of a prostitute, Blue-Tacked up by a doorbell. He’s examining it with all the forensic care I presume he puts into reading a wine list.‘What are you looking for?’ I ask him, in my head. ‘What woman will go best with your main course of terrible, horny loneliness?’I speculate, briefly, on how different the world would be if it were run by women. In that world, if you were a lonely, horny woman – as I am. As I always am – you’d see Blu-tacked postcards by Soho doorways that read, ‘Nice man in cardigan, 24, will talk to you about The Smiths whilst making you cheese-on-toast + come to parties with you. Apply within.
Caitlin Moran
Describing his experience with the sting of an extremely toxic jellyfish, he did something you don't often see a scientist do: he shivered.
Bill Bryson
Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight.
Terry Pratchett
Oh, what a lovely owl!" Cried the Wart.But when he went up to it and held out his hand, the owl grew half as tall again, stood up as stiff as a poker, closed its eyes so that there was only the smallest slit to peep through - as you are in the habit of doing when told to shut your eyes at hide-and-seek - and said in a doubtful voice"There is no owl."Then it shut its eyes entirely and looked the other way."It is only a boy," said Merlyn."There is no boy," said the owl hopefully, without turning round.
T.H. White
The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.
Arthur Conan Doyle
As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.
Alan Ayckbourn
Marianne had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of going out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to her, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and mechanically for every evening's engagement, though without expecting the smallest amusement from any, and very often without knowing, till the last moment, where it was to take her.
Jane Austen