Quotes by British Authors - Page 39

A million coincidences had to occur in order for you to exist
Dan Howell and Phil Lester
And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.
Patrick Ness
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.
C.S. Lewis
To God your every Want In instant Prayer display Pray always Pray and never faint Pray without ceasing Pray.
Charles Wesley
I am. That has not changed. I am the villain. I am the one you should curse, not praise. I am no hero. Heroes look to fix what lies before them and head home after the leak is patched. A villain will remain poking and prodding his achievement long after they've won. Evil never sleeps. It's always looking for more ways to expand on its conquest.
Charles Lee
You know,” he said. “I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.” There was silence, in the high place.
Neil Gaiman
The scientific definition of intelligence is the capacity to overcome obstacles
Mark Colenutt
The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
Bernard Cornwell
No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Aneurin Bevan
Khattam-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. "It's finished," we tell one another, "it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End.
Salman Rushdie
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Winston Churchill
The city which lay below was a charnel house built on multi-layered bones centuries older than those which lay beneath the cities of Hamburg or Dresden. Was this knowledge part of the mystery it held for her, a mystery felt most strongly on a bell-chimed Sunday on her solitary exploration of its hidden alleys and squares? Time had fascinated her from childhood, its apparent power to move at different speeds, the dissolution it wrought on minds and bodies, her sense that each moment, all moments past and those to come, were fused into an illusory present which with every breath became the unalterable, indestructible past. In the City of London these moments were caught and solidified in stone and brick, in churches and monuments and in bridges which spanned the grey-brown ever-flowing Thames. She would walk out in spring or summer as early as six o'clock, double-locking the front door behind her, stepping into a silence more profound and mysterious than the absence of noise. Sometimes in this solitary perambulation it seenmed that her own footsteps were muted, as if some part of her were afraid to waken the dead who had walked thse streets and had known the same silence.
P.D. James
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field than their own hearts in their closet.
Charles Caleb Colton
It was at that point Ginny felt a presence and turning to look into his eyes she knew destiny was waiting, just around the corner, over the hill. His dark limpid pools, full of hope and wonder, gazed longingly at her and slowly, as his stare captured her heart, a hush descended. All that surrounded them slipped away into darkness until she could see only him. What happened next was a blur.
Virginia Alison
There was something called Christianity.
Aldous Huxley
I was supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only your Phoenix lot got in the way...”“Yes, they do that,” said Dumbledore.
J.K. Rowling
Joy, joy, joy!Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,And the future is dark, and the present is spread,Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I love the silent hour of night,For blissful dreams may then arise,Revealing to my charmed sightWhat may not bless my waking eyes.
Anne Brontë
To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. you must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can we say of any system tried that it proved other than failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ad actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.
Rafael Sabatini
Jo's whimper rose slightly but the scream she yearned for wouldn't materialise. Instead, as she looked at her hand, she began to make a gurgling, gagging noise, more animal than human.
Martin Pond
I was against the Iraq war I was against the Afghan war I was against bombing Libya and Syria but to be quite honest and with a heavy heart because more innocent people are gonna be killed....We have to step in and help wipeout ISIS!
Cal Sarwar
An extraordinary dream by lord charles wellesley. (Charlotte Bronte)'In this slumber i thought i was walking on the banks of a river... Which murmered over small pebbles at the bottom, gleaming like crystals through the silver stream' 'and the green buds of the wild rose trees around were unopened' 'and a mild warmth were shed from the sun... Then at its height in the blue sky
Charlotte Brontë
If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses
John Ruskin
One word was the method by which the state collected their information. They could reel in the informants and spread them out like tentacles, ready to sting in any direction.
F.C. Malby
It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.
Lionel Shriver
Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?
Jane Austen
To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened, and loved--yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one's fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn't want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn't just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life.
Bear Grylls
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift except the gift of the power to use them.
Charles Kingsley
It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands.
Auberon Herbert
I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched. Here we sat together, Maxim and I, hand-in-hand, and the past and the future mattered not at all. This was secure, this funny little fragment of time he would never remember, never think about again…For them it was just after lunch, quarter-past-three on a haphazard afternoon, like any hour, like any day. They did not want to hold it close, imprisoned and secure, as I did. They were not afraid.
Daphne du Maurier
It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires.
Rebecca West
Ah God! to see the branches stirtAcross the moon at Grantchester!tTo smell the thrilling-sweet and rottentUnforgettable, unforgottentRiver-smell, and hear the breezet Sobbing in the little trees.tSay, do the elm-clumps greatly standtStill guardians of that holy land?tThe chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,tThe yet unacademic streamIs dawn a secret shy and coldtAnadyomene, silver-gold?tAnd sunset still a golden seatFrom Haslingfield to Madingley?tAnd after, ere the night is born,Do hares come out about the corn?tOh, is the water sweet and cool,tGentle and brown, above the pool?tAnd laughs the immortal river stilltUnder the mill, under the mill?Say, is there Beauty yet to find?tAnd Certainty? and Quiet kind?tDeep meadows yet, for to forgettThe lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yettStands the Church clock at ten to three?tAnd is there honey still for tea?
Rupert Brooke
Red's had her day. It's time to give pink a go.
Anthony T.Hincks
So this is supposed to be about the how, and when, and why, and what of reading -- about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time.
Nick Hornby
my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.
Nick Hornby
What a brilliant cover story. In a success-obsessed society like this one, what's the best rock to hide something under? It's the rock called failure.
Jon Ronson
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
Alain de Botton
Unbelief and belief are both marching on His road, while both are saying, ‘He is one and He has no associates’.
Idries Shah
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.
George Orwell
People see the cleverness of nature and suppose it's the cleverness of the animal itself but it was obvious to me that each and every segment of the animal isn't aware. How much I'd hate to live totally unaware of myself, I thought. What would be the point of living, of existing, if you weren't ever to know about it? I looked at the Fox Moth and pitied it, poor unconscious creature. But then, I supposed, at least it wouldn't be disappointed. It would never find out.
Poppy Adams
I do think your brother grows more peculiar every day,' I complain to Edward when he comes to my rooms in Whitehall Palace to escort me to dinner.'Which one?' he asks lazily. 'For you know I can do nothing right in the eyes of either. You would think they would be glad to have a York on the throne and peace in Christendom, and one of the finest Christmas feasts we have ever arranged; but no: Richard is leaving court to go back north as soon as the feast is over, to demonstrate his outrage that we are not slogging away in a battle with the French, and George is simply bad tempered.
Philippa Gregory
Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.
Leonora Carrington
Have to? Of course you have to! But only because of you, Harry, won't rest until Voldemort is finished! Think now, for once, if you have never heard of the prophecy! What would you do?
J.K. Rowling
Adam & Eve have been degraded, reduplicated forever, photocopies of photocopies, mistakes copied, magnified, augmented.
Johnny Rich
It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.
Samuel Johnson
You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it.
Neil Gaiman
Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.
G.K. Chesterton
'I think that's why his asking me to pull the plug hurt so much. He kept saying if I really loved him, I should have been able to do it. And I thought, if he really loved me, he would never have asked.'
Barbara Elsborg
Pink colors my world red!
Anthony T.Hincks
They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.
Eddie Izzard
However much I doubted the man's ability to accomplish the task he had set himself, I could not help admiring his faith and his industry.
Jim Corbett
I fear I am beyond your comprehension. - Gandalf the White
J.R.R. Tolkien
Based on the medical evidence that clearly states that being above 10,000 feet is hazardous to the health of sea level adapted humans, it is clear that all of the manned facilities on top of the 13,796 feet Mauna Kea summit in Hawaii should be removed and the summit restored back to its native environment.
Steven Magee
For a once renowned woman who loved telling tales of dodging bullets, wielding grenades and subverting dogs trained to kill, Christine's story is, surprisingly, little known today.
Clare Mulley
She marched to the door and said, "if I ever marry, Patrick O'Sullivan, I shall make sure that my mate for life is a decent woman, or even, maybe, a book.
Joanna Trollope
I don’t care what your excuse is, I don’t care what you think God told you to do, if you are in the business of closing children’s minds and obliterating their capacity to imagine, and depriving them of a capacity to laugh, then you are a criminal. Maybe not under the law, but under any decent system of morality.Shame on anyone who brainwashes a child and attacks their individual liberty and deprives them of the freedom that is the very definition of a human being. Shame.
Michael Grant
He shall never know how I love him
Emily Brontë
If you do not want to be lied to, then you need to stop following politics.
Steven Magee
I have the not altogether unsatisfying impression that civilisation is collapsing around me.Is it my age, I wonder, or the age we live in? I am not sure. Civilisations do collapse, after all, but on the other hand people grow old with rather greater frequency.
Theodore Dalrymple
Tell them stories.
Philip Pullman