Quotes by British Authors - Page 41

Perhaps this is how it is--life flowing smoothly over memory and history, the past returning or not, depending on the tide. History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities, surface towards us, then sink away. Some we hook out, others we ignore, and as the pattern changes, so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time, which returns everything, changes everything.
Jeanette Winterson
Why do humans never do as they're told? Someone should replace you all with robots. No, on second though, they shouldn't, bad idea.
Jonathan Morris
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Douglas Adams
It is the prerogative of women to make men wait.
C.S. Woolley
Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty.
Bertrand A. Russell
...because you are not trying simply to complete a set of books or toys or Weetabix cards, you are trying to complete yourself, to get back to the whole person you were before, as a child, before the obstructions and compromises of adulthood got in the way. And yet, all you are really doing is accumulating a pile of crap, souvenirs of the futility of the quest.
Neil Perryman
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Douglas Adams
There is a power within and without. If you ask, it answers. It's just a matter of being calm and wise and listening. It takes years.
John Altman
Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could havemade me do it, or prevented me from doing it.
J.K. Rowling
I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.
Aleister Crowley
There is no doubt a new dress is a help under all circumstances.
Noel Streatfeild
Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.
Aldous Huxley
It is not truth but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.
Walter Raleigh
She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses…Orlando then came to the conclusion (opening half-a-dozen books)…that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea…next (here were half-a-dozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining) that literature since it all these dinners must be growing very corpulent; next (she was invited to a score of lectures on the Influence of this upon that; the Classical revival; the Romantic survival, and other titles of the same engaging kind) that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry; next (here she attended a reception given by a peeress) that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable; next (here she visited Carlyle’s sound-proof room at Chelsea) that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate…
Virginia Woolf
He's the kind of guy who might not have an expiration date. Who I could fall for so completely that I might as well put my heart in a blender right now because it would hurt less. Who I could want with the kind of passion that makes you forget important things like the promises you make to yourself.
Rachael Allen
I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding.""Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand.
Daphne du Maurier
For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse.
Bryn Hammond
The unrequited love of ones' only living offspring has its own particular slow acid burn
David Nicholls
There is never a bad time for a pun. There’s also never really a good time for a pun. You might as well just stay braced for a pun at all times, and ride them when they come with as much grace as you can manage.The fact that you can replace ‘pun’ with ‘disaster’ in the last three rules says a lot about the human race.
Terry Pratchett
There is a great deal to be saidFor being dead.
E. Clerihew Bentley
The dead are way more organized than the living.
China Miéville
You can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next, by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest, by their preference for the discussion of ideas.
Henry Thomas Buckle
When a sex tape gets made a star is born with a publicity agent on speed dial a six figure payout and a line of tacky lingerie in the works
Saira Viola
What is war?' I asked.Oh, it's a messy, stupid business,' he said, 'Two sides wave flags and beat drums and shoot one another dead. It always begins this way, making speeches, talking about rights, and all that sort of thing.'But what is it for? What do they get out of it?'I don't know,' he said. 'To tell you the truth, I don't think they know themselves.
Hugh Lofting
The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.
William Golding
Identity and self-belief: a courage that swells from within, borne of waters drunk deeply.
Fennel Hudson
The Element is about discovering your self, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can't be yourself in a swarm.
Ken Robinson
If men and women are to understand each other to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy and to become capable of genuine comradeship the foundation must be laid in youth.
Havelock Ellis
I think I know the delights of freedom
Charles Dickens
In torment, there was release.In the darkness, there was light.In solitude, there were companions.
C.C. Humphreys
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'
Hilaire Belloc
I understood how strangers met and fell into bed, not how they met and fell in love. I wasn't sure what falling in love meant. The very notion seemed so corny, so arbitrary, so fragile.
Chloe Thurlow
I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought feeling after feeling action after action had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an harrow to the string then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead through to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontier-post across it. So many roads once now so many culs de sac.
C.S. Lewis
And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a-- for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.
Henry Fielding
Boys say they don't mind how you get your hair done. But then they leave you for someone with really great standard girl hair and the next thing you know you're alone with a masculine crop crying into your granola.
Alexa Chung
I'll show you how," Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance.
Diana Wynne Jones
If someone you love asks you to give up something you love, don't do it.
James Anderson
Being a writer is not just about typing. It’s also about surviving the rollercoaster of the creative journey.
Joanna Penn
Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. "Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' q
David Mitchell
You answer to none but the whim of your own black heart.
Joshua Winning
Let it all go, one foot in the grave and one bag packed. We shall go to our end in the warm glow of the past, burning up the memories, all the clutter given back.
Peter R. Pouncey
He said: I don't like to read. And I said, honey, you haven't found the right girl.
Chloe Thurlow
Sir, — Whether women are the equals of men has been endlessly debated; whether they have souls has been a moot point; but can it be too much to ask [for a definitive acknowledgement that at least they are animals?… Many hon. members may object to the proposed Bill enacting that, in statutes respecting the suffrage, 'wherever words occur which import the masculine gender they shall be held to include women;' but could any object to the insertion of a clause in another Act that 'whenever the word "animal" occur it shall be held to include women?' Suffer me, thorough your columns, to appeal to our 650 [parliamentary] representatives, and ask — Is there not one among you then who will introduce such a motion? There would then be at least an equal interdict on wanton barbarity to cat, dog, or woman… Yours respectfully, AN EARNEST ENGLISHWOMAN
Joanna Bourke
I can’t bear the smell of cigars, can you?” said Lady Partridge.t“Lionel hates it too,” murmured Rachel. As did Nick, to whom the dry lavatorial stench of cigars signified the inexplicable confidence of other men’s tastes and habits, and their readiness to impose them on their fellows.
Alan Hollinghurst
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Rudyard Kipling
She sleeps like a cocoyam. A thing without senses. She sleeps like his mother, unplugged from the world.
Taiye Selasi
History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.
Julian Barnes
Cool is not an attitude - It's a state of mind
Roy Smoothe
I don't wanna be a lover,I just wanna be your victim.
Elvis Costello
Some are born to sweet delight Some are born to endless night.
William Blake
We move between two darknesses.
E.M. Forster
Trauma. It doesn't eke itself out over time. It doesn't split itself manageably into bite-sized chunks and distribute itself equally throughout your life.Trauma is all or nothing. A tsunami wave of destruction.A tornado of unimaginable awfulness that whooshes into your life - just for one key moment - and wreaks such havoc that, in just an instant, your whole world will never be the same again.
Holly Bourne
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James
Mr Moss's courtyard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The ruling passion be it what it will The ruling passion conquers reason still.
Alexander Pope
There are doubtless those who would wish to lock up all those who suspected of terrorist and other serious offences and, in the time-honored phrase, throw away the key. But a suspect is by definition a person whom no offence has been proved. Suspicions, even if reasonably entertained, may prove to be misplaced, as a series of tragic miscarriages of justice has demonstrated. Police officers and security officials can be wrong. It is a gross injustice to deprive of his liberty for significant periods a person who has committed no crime and does not intend to do so. No civilized country should willingly tolerate such injustices.
Tom Bingham
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Hilary Mantel
Who controls the past controls the future who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell
My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: ''Neil, you're an educated man. Where does it say...''He would need a quote from the Bible, or an essay about owls. I was his occasional research assistant.
Neil Gaiman