Quotes by British Authors - Page 393

What happens when you don't know the truth but you can't believe the lies, when you can't find a way--through fact or fiction--to give meaning to your own existence? Without a narrative for you own life, do you ever really exist at all?
Maria Goodin
When God does not answer His children according to the letter, He does so according to the spirit. If thou askest for coarse meal, wilt thou be angered because He gives thee the finest flour? If thou seekest bodily health, shouldst thou complain if instead thereof He makes thy sickness turn to the healing of spiritual maladies?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
We're not cannibals,' he said as if to remind them. 'Cannibals boil people alive in cauldrons. I prefer to think of ourselves as evolved eaters. As a family, we're at the forefront of fine dining. Human flesh is an acquired taste, and I've worked hard to give you all the chance to appreciate it for yourselves.
Matt Whyman
Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
John Singer Sargent
It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil-far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word "human" disappears from the race.
Jill Tweedie
Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly."I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more." than nothing." opinion," said Alice.
Lewis Carroll
He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.
W Somerset Maugham
Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to find a world which was at peace with itself. No matter how always those few wanted more than others. Those not satisfied with running their own lives but wishing to have power over the lives of the others. Greedy people. Greedy for wealth, or power or both.
Garry Douglas Kilworth
That's my secret and my shame. I'm Nona Grey, war is in my veins, and the screams of my enemies are music to me.
Mark Lawrence
If I can teach myself the art of loneliness, then perhaps the art of writing will come more easily to me.
Nell Stevens
God, I felt as if I had just been flattened by ‘Elmer’ the elephant.
Adele Rose
If a nation has not God that nation must fall, but if a nation has God then all the powers of evil, and all the armies, cannot shake its foundations; no, not even if the whole world is arrayed against it.
Taylor Caldwell
It was getting very clear then (and during this week Riseholme naturally thought of nothing else) that Lucia designed a longer residence in the garish metropolis than she had admitted. Since she chose to give no information on the subject, mere pride and scorn of vulgar curiosity forebade anyone to ask her, though of course it was quite proper (indeed a matter of duty) to probe the matter to the bottom by every other means in your power, and as these bits of evidence pieced themselves together, Riseholme began to take a very gloomy view of Lucia's real nature. On the whole it was felt that Mrs. Boucher, when she paused in her bath-chair as it was being wheeled round the green, nodding her head very emphatically, and bawling into Mrs. Antrobus's ear-trumpet, reflected public opinion."She's deserting Riseholme and all her friends," said Mrs. Boucher, "that's what she's doing. She means to cut a dash in London, and lead London by the nose. There'll be fashionable parties, you'll see, there'll be paragraphs, and then when the season's over she'll come back and swagger about them. For my part I shall take no interest in them. Perhaps she'll bring down some of her smart friends for a Saturday till Monday. There'll be Dukes and Duchesses at The Hurst. That's what she's meaning to do, I tell you, and I don't care who hears it."That was lucky, as anyone within the radius of a quarter of a mile could have heard it.
E.F. Benson
Man is to be understood only in his relation to God.
C.S. Lewis
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains.
Alain de Botton
The whole business is built on ego,vanity,self-satisfaction , and its total crap to pretend its not
George Michael
..now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.
Salman Rushdie
Steve [sports psychiatrist] had already taught me to try and stop worrying so much about pleasing everyone. We knew that this was one of my most draining flaws and he again used three groups to clarify my thinking. There would always be some people, Steve said, who would care about me and love me. In contrast there would also be a select group of people who would never warm to me - no matter what I did. And in the middle came the overwhelming mass who were largely indifferent to any of my failures or triumphs. I needed to understand that most people didn't really care what I did or said. All my anguish about how they might perceive me was redundant. Steve helped me realize that I spent too much time trying to please those oblivious people in the middle or, more problematically, the small group who would never change their critical opinion of me. I should concentrate on the people who really did show concern for me.
Victoria Pendleton
Everything Can Change in One Moment of Time
Debbie Ann Egdell
You see, at Rugby I was rather a great man. There one had a share in the ruling of 300 boys, and a good deal of responsibility; but here one has only just to take care of oneself, and keep out of scrapes; and that's what I never could do.
Thomas Hughes
The Pope is barely Catholic enough for some converts.
John Ayscough
Seven deadly sins,seven ways to win,seven holy paths to hell,and your trip beginsSeven downward slopesseven bloodied hopesseven are your burning fires,seven your desires...
Iron Maiden
But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher."Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!
Elizabeth Gaskell
The speed of modern life is an oppressive thing, and the corporate world is quick to punish those with an honest heart.
Fennel Hudson
All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own,' said Birbal, 'and so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none.
Salman Rushdie
If indeed good were a feeling....then it would exist in time. But that is why to call it so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. It will always remain pertinent to ask, whether the feeling itself is good; and if do, then good cannot itself be identical with any feeling.
G.E. Moore
New becomes stale and old becomes fresh. The impractical, ageing estate long ago left behind to Singapore's pioneers and their homemade tofu stalls takes on a certain irreverence and originality; an anarchic streak even. It goes against the architectural grain. It stands out in a crowd, a rebel with curves. The reclusive behaviour only adds to the appeal. So the old place becomes "hip".
Neil Humphreys
Half of your mastery of power comes from what you do NOT do, what you do not ALLOW yourself to get dragged into.
Robert Greene
We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
Leonora Carrington
O how vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.
Samuel Johnson
If we can cease envisaging ourselves as metaphorical foetuses, and substitute the image of a newborn child, then that will be at least a small intellectual advance. In time, perhaps, we may even learn to toddle.
Salman Rushdie
Think larger. Redraw what is possible.
David Mitchell
Mantra: My swirling mind becomes peaceful, and my body releases all tension. I surrender to the love of the universe, which heals me totally.
Jay Woodman
Growth occurs when we discover how to remain authentically ourselves in the presence of potentially threatening things. Maturity is the possession of coping skills: we can take in our stride things that previously would have knocked us off course. We are less fragile, less easily shocked and hence more capable of engaging with situations as they really are
Alain de Botton
As all the rivers run into the sea, so all delights centre in our Beloved.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
If your glass seems half empty, use a smaller glass.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
These were early days for me in the American culture, and so I wasn’t aware that when people are showing you guns, they’re not threatening you, it’s like they’re showing you their art collection. For me, at that point, what he was presenting to me was very challenging.
John Lydon
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Underground, the stars are legend.
Catherine Fisher
When we mourn those who die young – those who have been robbed of time – we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasure we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives. We believe that the untried soul, trapped in its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek.
Josephine Hart
If I ever get to go to the moon, I’ll probably just stand on the moon and go ‘Hmmm, yeah…fair enough…gotta go home now.
Noel Gallagher
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Samuel Johnson
I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It's as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get.
Neil Gaiman
Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!
Lewis Carroll
Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
C.S. Lewis
Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Terry Pratchett
Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure the comfort.
Humphy Davy
It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was succesfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: 'Thing-ies') or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'.
Terry Pratchett
Female castration results in concentration of her feelings upon her male companion, and her impotence in confrontations with her own kind. Because all her love is guided by the search for security, if not for her offspring then for her crippled and fearful self, she cannot expect to find it in her own kind, whom she knows to be weak and unsuitable.
Germaine Greer
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.
Robert Graves
What business had I to think of one that never thought of me?
Anne Brontë
To live in modernity--an era contemporaneous with the triumph of the news--is to be constantly reminded that, thanks to science and technology, change and improvement are continuous and relentless. This is part of the reason we must keep checking the news in the first place: we might at any moment be informed of some extraordinary development that will fundamentally alter reality. Time is an arrow following a precarious, rapid and yet tantalizingly upward trajectory.
Alain de Botton
The legend of our times, it has been suggested, might be "The Revenge of Failure". This is what Envy has done for us. If we cannot paint well, we will destroy the canons of painting and pass ourselves off as painters. If we will not take the trouble to write poetry, we will destroy the rules of prosody and pass ourselves off as poets. If we are not inclined to the rigors of an academic discipline, we will destroy the standards of that discipline and pass ourselves off as graduates. If we cannot or will not read, we will say that "linear thought" is now irrelevant and so dispense with reading. If we cannot make music, we will simply make a noise and persuade others that it is music. If we can do nothing at all, why! we will strum a guitar all day, and call it self-expression. As long as no talent is required, no apprenticeship to a skill, everyone can do it, and we are all magically made equal. Envy has at least momentarily been appeased,and failure has had its revenge.
Henry Fairlie
Most of us think too much of speech, which is but the shell of thought.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.
Gail Honeyman
Hedwig didn't return until the end of the Easter holidays. Percy's letter was enclosed in a package of Easter eggs that Mrs. Weasley had sent. Both Harry's and Ron's were the size of dragon eggs, and full of home-made toffee. Hermione's, however, was smaller than a chicken's egg. Her face fell when she saw it."Your mum doesn't read Witch's Weekly, by any chance, does she, Ron?" she asked quietly."Yeah," said Ron, whose mouth was full of toffee. "Gets it for the recipes."Hermione looked sadly at her tiny egg.
J.K. Rowling
Henry knew sin was a challenge to life; not an act of unreason, but an act of courage and determination.
John Fowles
Lucy's eyes began to grow accustomed to the light, and she saw the trees that were nearest her more distinctly. A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her. She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at a silver birch; it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing. She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah!- she would be the best of all. She would be a precious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.
C.S. Lewis
Every woman is different in her own special way.
Habeeb Akande
Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to.
Hannen Swaffer